"Morality" in *GR* (cont.)

[jbor]

The question over the extent of Pokler's "guilt" in *GR* is an intriguing
one. Pynchon's portrayal of this character's psyche -- as with Enzian,
Blicero, Slothrop, Katje, Roger, indeed, most of the other major characters
-- is fascinating and complex, and the reader is tantalised by the promise
of a finite answer -- of all the data coming together and the pieces falling
into place -- just as the character is. From the second visit Pokler
suspects that it is a different "Ilse", that the process of "negotiating for
his child" that he undergoes with Weissmann might be even more sinister than
he imagined:

     Even as Pokler embraced her, the perverse whispering began. Is it the
   same one? Have they sent you a different child? Why didn't you look
   closer last time, Pokler? (417)

He even ponders a future time when, as

   the years passed, as they grew more nubile, would Pokler even come to
   fall in love with one -- would she reach the king's row that way and
   become a queen-substitute for lost, for forgotten Leni? The Opponent
   knew that Pokler's suspicion would always be stronger than any real
   fears about interest. (418)

The narration here is standard realist fare -- third person, detached,
omniscient -- filtered through the character's pov. The fantasy chess-game
metaphor which continues throughout Pokler's story is telling: it captures
his solipsistic paranoia adeptly and succinctly.

When this "Ilse" touches his leg suggestively, Pokler, or the narrative,
fantasises a scenario where "paternal plow found its way into filial furrow"
in a night of torrid incest followed by escape, romantic elopement. Then

     No. What Pokler did was choose to believe she wanted comfort that
   night, wanted not to be alone. Despite Their game, Their palpable evil,
   though he had no more reason to trust "Ilse" than he trusted "Them", by
   an act not of faith, not of courage but of conservation, he chose to
   believe that. ... (421)

The choices facing Pokler at that moment are terrible. It might or might not
be his daughter, but whoever she is this girl has either been hired by
"Them" and instructed to offer herself to Pokler in this way, or else she
has been forced to whore herself in the camp and perceives Pokler as just
another Nazi captor. So, he must repress his doubt about her identity and
his sure instinct as to what her gesture implied. In order to maintain this
"reality" he can ask no real questions, for fear of finding out the charade,
and so, in the cruellest of all ironies, he does not even discover that she
is an inmate at Dora right next door to the Mittelwerke. He manages to go on
like this for six years until, at their final meeting, as a sullen
adolescent, the girl rebels, taunts him:

     " ... My job is being a prisoner. I'm a professional inmate. I know how
   to get favors, who to steal from, how to inform, how to -- " (430)

Pokler hits her then, "hysterical", because he knows she is about to reveal
a "truth". Catharsis comes, but is it because Pokler recognises his guilt or
that he sees the inevitable end of the charade, knows that "Ilse" must soon
assert her independence?

     Close to losing control, Pokler then committed his act of courage. He
   quit the game.

The first phrase is ambiguous, double-edged. Pokler has also lost his
control over "Ilse".


In *GR* the true identity of the Zwolfkinder "Ilse" is indeterminate.
Further, noone really knows -- least of all Pokler -- what he "knew", what
he believed about "Ilse", or how "guilty" he is, how much of the "data" he
simply suppressed for his own peace of mind:

     They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit ... (428)

Pokler's gesture of humanity in the Dora camp can only come after he has
"quit the game": but it has been a game constructed in his own head,
remaining unconfirmed all along. The inmates' faces are "ones he knows after
all, and holds dear as himself", but his tears and sudden understanding can
do nothing to dissolve the walls of their prison. "But what can he ever do
about it?" (433) And so he gives away the wedding band, no longer a symbol
of marriage and family, merely now a medium of exchange, "good for a few
meals, or a blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home. . . . "

Was Pokler tried at Nuremberg? Should he have been? No black and white
documentary this ...

best