Benny's Job

[Doug Millison]

V. for Vietnam, why not? I like this idea of alligator hunting as an 
allusion to the U.S. project in Vietnam; it's not the end-all and 
be-all of reading V., but interesting to consider  all the same. 
When I was in the U.S. Army -- in Korea, up along the "frontier of 
freedom" 6 clicks south of the DMZ --  they rotated through the 2d 
Infantry Division many of the combat vets who were too shook up to 
send back home just yet, but not quite crazy enough to lock up, and 
animal metaphors abounded in daily life.  Perhaps the sickest in 
everyday use was the reference to napalm victims as "crispy critters."

We can't really kill the dragon, and we kill or curse ourselves in 
the effort -- that's at least part of the story of Beowulf,  and the 
tale of the Lambton Worm that Pynchon gives us in M&D.

Pynchon appears unable to resist letting this story take a political spin:

"Cruelly serv'd," it seems to the Revd. "Nine innocent Generations. 
Whatever aid against the Worm young Lambton invok'd, its Source 
requir'd Blood Sacrifices. Because he spar'd his own Father's Life, 
it curs'd him and his Line most grievously for hundreds of years? 
What Agency could be so remorselessly cruel? Is it possible that at 
the battle in the Wear, the _wrong forces_ won?"

TRP lets it take a religious spin, too, in what the Revd appears to 
interpret as an allusion to the Garden of Eden story of Adam and Eve 
and the Serpent and to an older version of that story:

"Why Christ won, that Day. . .?"

"the Worm may have embodied. . .an older way of proceeding,-- very 
like the ancient Alchemists' Tales, meant to convey by Symbols 
certain teachings."

"The Ancient figure of the Serpent through the Ring, or Sacred 
Copu-lation, a much older magic, and certainly one the Christians 
wanted to eradicate."

Stonehengickally,
Doug

Dave Monroe:
[snip]
>I obviously take no immediate offense at the possibility of 
>alligators allegorizing Vietnam, the Vietnams, maybe even the 
>Vietnamese, in V.  Representations of a representation, of the 
>wartime dehumanization of the enemy "Other" (cf. my comments about a 
>possible allusion to the slur, "gook").  Cf., say--and here might be 
>another, albeit particularly oblique, intertext--the "bugs" in 
>Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, exemplars, whether or (more 
>likely) not RH "intended" them to be (though Paul Verhoeven 
>certainly read them as such in adapting the novel to film).  And by 
>all means see ...
[snip]
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