GRGR(19): Whipping Gretel

[Jeremy Osner]

The transition from Slothrop's experience whipping and fucking Greta
Erdmann, to Pökler's experience years earlier, fantasizing about doing
it,
is totally seamless, which suggests to me some sort of kinship between
the
two of them. What do they have in common besides their real/imagined
coupling with Marge? -- They are both engineers, I guess -- I mean I
never
really thought of Slothrop as an engineer before, but he is, right? Or
else
how could he understand all the A4 stuff...

And both of them seem pretty passive in their relationship to the rest
of the
world. Pökler obviously, I mean we're just about to read a 30-page story

about his passivity, that is practically the sum total of his character
in the
book. And Slothrop too, I think, sort of moves along the pathways laid
out
for him by his author without making many futile attempts at resistance.

(Where did that sentence come from?) Look at him in London, in Monaco,
even in his escape from the Casino -- always following the path of least

resistance. Perhaps lately, in the Zone, he has found something
meaningful
enough to rouse him to action -- and we could talk here about the "What
sea is this you have crossed?" line in the previous section, how it
could be
directed at Slothrop -- we will have to wait and see :--)

I reckon I might assert that Pökler is the passive element in Slothrop's

nature -- but I'm not sure what I would mean by that. It could also be
interesting to look at the transition from Slothrop's head to Pökler's
head as
an illustration of how (as I posted previously) the borders of
Slothrop's
personality are getting leaky. Also how their passivity ties in with the
S &
M -- if that's not too obvious -- it seems to me like Pökler is more
actively
interested in being a sadist than Slothrop, who just does it because a
couple of the women he's with want him to. Or is that a reader trap?

--
Mortals are immortals, and
immortals are mortals, the one
living the other's death and
dying the other's life.

Heraclitus, quoted by Bertrand Russell
http://www.readin.com/books/westernphilosophy/