"Morality" in *GR*

[David Morris]

>From: "jbor" <
>Of course, this symbolic marriage scene is twinned with the one which opens 
>the sequence, as Slothrop takes the "tiny frost-flower" of a hand of the 
>little Nazi girl (281-3), orphanned and scarred by the rampages of the 
>escaped Dora prisoners. Slothrop moves "out of the fire's pale" and into 
>blackness in order to embrace her pain ("He can't even tell if she is 
>leading"), just as Pokler has to enter the "darkness outside" of his world 
>of scientific "vacuums" and "labyrinths" in order to embrace the Jewess's 
>(432-3). Both men have embraced an/the Other; they have suddenly realised 
>that there are other worlds and other perspectives on the world beyond 
>their own. They can't rationally experience or empathise with this Other, 
>and her suffering, can't "know the pain" so to speak, and thus it has to be 
>an irrational sensation experienced beyond the "light" of reason. Both men 
>are here beginning to shake off their preconceptions about what is "good" 
>and what is "evil". What Pokler gives up with his wedding ring are his own 
>hopes of regaining a happy family setup with Leni and Ilse. Gone are his 
>self-delusions about himself and his work: he had convinced himself that 
>the rocket he willingly helped construct would take them to the moon and 
>beyond, was not an instrument of torture and oppression. What Slothrop has 
>to (ultimately) give up is "the one ghost-feather his fingers always brush 
>by ... America". (623)

This is a nice pairing.  And contrast.

Slothrop's dance with the shadow-girl is like a wedding, white lace dress 
and all.  But it is really a seance in which the doll's hair (Jewish 
woman's) provides the magic power for the dead girl's crossing.  His holding 
her cold little hand hearkens back to his wish to save the little children 
from the bombs back in London, which proved futile.  Now he holds a dead 
girl's.  Who's bombs killed her?  Slothrop gets a thorough education in the 
zone.

Eventually Slothrop's feather will provide a talisman as well as a curse to 
those that follow.


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