The Adversary

[Tim Strzechowski]

Near the end of Chapter 3, Driblette discusses _The Courier's Tragedy_
with Oedipa and refers to the Tristero as "The Adversary" (Harper
Perennial, 80).  In _A Companion to CoL49_, Grant states:

"Driblette's name for the Tristero captures its dual nature, suggesting
the organization's darker, Manichaen side as well as its role as the
champion of the disinherited."

I defer to the Bible scholars on the List for more details on this, but
it's my understanding that the term "The Adversary" is used *solely* in
the Book of Job (whose themes involve suffering and searching for
answers), to describe a character which we frequently equate with Satan
(although we also see the "serpent" in the Book of Genesis, nowhere else
in the OT does a character go by the name "The Adversary").

In _The Literary Guide to the Bible_ (Ed. Robert Alter and Frank
Kermode), the text notes that the "adversary" (in Hebrew, it's "satan")
moniker is "the antecedent of the later Satan and anachronistically so
called in the King James Version; in Hebrew Scriptures [the Adversary
is] an angel whose task it is to roam the earth and expose human
wrongdoing" (p. 284).  It's also important to stress (and, forgive me,
but I cannot recall where I read this) that the role of the Adversary
was traditionally more of a "questioner," almost like a lawyer
questioning a defendant, in an effort to expose human frailty.  It was
only as Hebrew wisdom literature developed over the centuries that "The
Adversary" took on the malicious characteristics of what we today call
"Satanic." (cf. Elaine Pagels, _The Origin of Satan_, wherein she
theorizes that Satan character is a development of the four Gospel
writers.)

Is it too much to assume that Pynchon would have known all this, and
known the connotations of The Adversary when referring to the Tristero
as such?  Given our earlier discussions of God and revelations and the
role of religiousity in the novel thus far, it seems a crime to pass up
the term "Adversary" when it relates to a major part of the novel.  Yet,
I wonder if any aspects of the Tristero parallel the biblical
connotations of The Adversary.

Later