GRGR(23) - Down Below (Was: test)

[David Morris]

>From: Mark Wright
>
>>--- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>I don't think it's a fantasy any more than the rest of the text is a
>>fantasy: since this is fiction, Pynchon constructs GR's own "reality"
>>(also of course its own "fantasy").
>
>Roger that, and fur shur.  But characters have Phictive Phantasies alla 
>time....
>I think Slothrop is rattled by a fictive fantasy.  He comes back on
>deck "still shaking", rather than bleeding from the mouth with an
>immobilized arm.  Perhaps no one is dead, since the fantasy starts
>before he ever goes below.  And no one up top (Stepahnia, Prokolowski)
>seems aware of anything, particularly.

I guess no matter where you place the "reality" frame, the more important 
question is "What the message?"  I can see your point about Slothrop 
emerging w/o reference to injuries inflicted below.  And I see your point 
about it maybe not mattering about which is true.  Ghost or a fictive 
fantasy, the experience bears great weight upon Slothrop's psyche.  I think 
the more important question is who in his fantasy (or not) was the culprit, 
and for what reasons did this phantasm abuse Slothrop so?

Slothrop is completely terrorized in this experience.  The only other 
episode in the book so far (and so far as I can remember) where Slothrop has 
been so affected by the terrorization of another (not including his infant 
experiences) is at the Casino H.G. when he is stripped of his past and 
returns to Katje's room wet and blubbering.  In all his other brushes with 
adversaries, he is foolishly, yet successfully, defiant: Our Hero.  Here he 
is brought low and helpless.  There is no struggle possible, and he's about 
to shit himself.

Somebody has literally "rubbed Slothrop's face" in it, right?  Very 
apropopriate for Slothrop's life as a dog, no?  Guilt (and fear of 
punishment) is the motive force at work.  And what does Slothrop have to 
feel guilty about?  Abandonment (and maybe abuse) of the Child, another very 
reccurent theme in GR.

David Morris

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