MDDM "Another Slave-Colony"

[Scott Badger]

Rob:
> > Is Tenebrae fishing for red-herrings?
> >
>
> Perhaps, but Wicks has been happy to slip hints of conspiracy
> into his tale
> all along - without ever making it explicit whether or what the conspiracy
> actually was - and does so again in the conversation he relates after his
> response to Tenebrae's query here. The narrative has emphasized
> that both M
> & D suspected an array of shenanigans going on behind their
> appointments and
> various destinations, and I think that this has probably fuelled
> Tenebrae's
> suspicions. Wicks plays the innocent, and teases 'Brae, but most certainly
> he has been pulling on those strings I think.
>
> I guess the 64 000 dollar question is whether or not there *were*
> shenanigans at play in the sudden commissioning of M & D to map the Line.
> That is, as far as the "historical record" is concerned.

Don't Mason and Dixon wonder, more than once, whether they might be
accidental participants - simply in the way, at the time - of History's
"shenanigans"? As conspiracies go, what would picking M&D, in particular, to
be the surveyors lead to?  Whereas, the Line itself, surveyed at its birth,
still divides America today...

I agree that the lack of narrative attention to the Penns and the Calverts,
and the alleged purpose of the Line, is notable. Slavery, though, is not
ignored and isn't the Line destined to play a more Historically profound
role as the figurative, and literal, division between anti and pro slavery
Americans? Does anyone know whether Mason and/or Dixon ever expressed the
anti-slavery sentiments that Pynchon's characters do?

Scott Badger