175s

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> Turn back to page 289 and the narrator, not sure if it the
> same one, but it seems to be,  says,
>
> "Lotta those *fags* (P's italics) still around, with baskets
> and 175 badges out on display, staring moistly from
> doorways. "

The narration is pretty obviously being filtered through Slothrop at this
point Terrance. He's the one seeing what's being being described, the one
who who uses that word "fags" in such a tone. Don't forget about Slothrop's
latent homophobia as revealed back in St Veronica's. I don't think he ever
comes to grips with that aspect of his white *American* preconditioning,
even though he does overcome his prejudice against black men after having
mat up with Marvy and then Enzian.

>
> on page 665 the 175s are out of Dora.

As they were back on p. 289.

> What I'm asking is, why  are  the 175s, out of Dora, their
> "home," "homesick?"

Yes, it's a terrible *irony*, isn't it? The only place they ever felt safe
and accepted for who they are was in the camp at Dora.

But, what's your explanation?

For me, the fact that their guards at Dora were in absolute awe and fear of
Blicero suggests why the 175s now revere him:

    ... What the 175s heard from their real SS guards there was enough to
    elevate Weissman on the spot -- they, his own brother-elite, *didn't
    know* what this man was up to. When prisoners came in earshot the guards
    stopped whispering. But their fear kept echoing: fear not of Weissmann
    personally, but of the time itself, a time so desperate that *he* could
    now move through the Mittelwerke as if he owned it, a time which was
    granting him a power different from that of Auschwitz or Buchenwald, a
    power they couldn't have borne themselves. . . . (666.9 up)

The "time so desperate" is the inevitable defeat, and Weissmann's "power" at
this time is not just the power over human life and death (i.e. "Auschwitz &
Buchenwald"), certainly not just (not even) the authority of SS within the
Third Reich, but something far greater. It's *Badass* power.

best