VV (1): Commentary II- the Inanimate

[Thomas Eckhardt]

cj hurtt wrote:

> This is true but we do have two instances of people pissing on/in inanimate
> objects. we got a drunken sailor on 9 releiving himself in a Packard
> Patrician (Patrick?) gas tank and Benny thinking he would like to piss out
> the sun on page 26.

Benny's pissing at the sun is depicted as a farcical attempt at bringing about
the apocalypse and as a blasphemous act. After he has "extinguished" the sun
"for good", it continues "on immortal, god of a darkened world". The passage
mockingly refers to age old mythological thought, but it might be of interest to
note that traditionally the sun dies when it vanishes on the western horizon and
is born again in the east. There is no such metamorphosis here: The sun
continues, it is immortal - just like the "dead rocks" that follow in the text.
Also, there seems to be a contradiction between Benny's view of the sun as an
inanimate thing and the narrator's or Benny's mythological reference.

It is an interesting passage. What, for example, do you make of:

"(Inanimate objects could do what they wanted. Not what they wanted because
things do not want; only men. But things do what they do, and this is why
Profane was pissing at the sun)."

There are two possible referents for "inanimate things" or "things" - the sun
and Benny - and if I am not mistaken it remains doubtful whether Benny pisses at
the sun because it does what it does, or whether he does it because he himself,
being an inanimate yo-yo, can do what he wants/does. Or am I completely off
track here?

Also, the whole scene reminds me vaguely of Ahab's announcement to strike out at
the sun if it insulted him.

Thomas