175s

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:

> 
> I don't think that Pynchon ever suggests that Dora was a "Homo-Eden", and
> that's not the irony at all. The fact that the 175s are homesick for Dora is
> an indictment of the society they have been "liberated" into, not a signal
> that the camp was some sort of gay resort!

This indictment of the society is first an indictment of the
Nazis (the Church as well).
The Nazis ( the Church, the state, the powers that be and
the status quo, is complicit here)  are the ones who  put
the 175 badges on these men and forced them into a prison
camp and abused and murdered them. 

lest we forget, Weissmann is a Nazi, Blicero/ Weissmann is
on the other side, his power growing, his Rocket-Structure
influencing the oppressed.    

The irony here is first, that the men are "liberated" into a
society that will continue to treat them very badly. So this
"liberation" is not a liberation at all. The men will
continue to be mistreated, to be unaccented and persecuted
for being men like all other men, but for some
"difference."  

The irony as others have noted runs  very deep here because
in the camp the men were an all male homosexual prison
population, they wore the 175 badge and they were in a sense
out of the closet but in prison. The prison was hell, no gay
resort, but the men, as the documentation shows, were able
to take some solace, as men imprisoned do, in solidarity. 

GR, satirizes the West and it is also a satire of America,
it's hegemony, it's colonial past, its colonial present,
it's present and past  homophobia and racism, so it's very
ironic that when Slothrop sees the 175 prisoner, now
"liberated," *he thinks* the man has his "fag" badge out on
display. 


This idea that one is imprisoned by a homophobic, racist,
intolerant, an *unKIND* ("kind" is P's term for brotherly
love, or christian love) society for being a man like all
other men but for some "difference," being a Catholic or
Homosexual, or  African, or Jewish, and a therefore a
"threat" to the established hierarchy, and thus mistreated,
abused, enslaved, murdered,  by the oppressive establishment
and abandoned by the status quo, is indicative of the moral
position of the "applied author."  

But the irony is not simply and only that the men have been
"liberated" into a society that will continue to treat them
badly and deny them the liberty afforded to other men. 
Oh no, this irony runs much deeper, because the men set up
an order that is based on the rocket-structure and Blicero
is the god at the top of this "religious" hierarchy, his
power is absolute, he is their chosen oppressor. The men do
not choose him because of sexual orientation. Nope. There is
no support for this conjecture in the text. In fact, the
text is very clear, the men choose Blicero because of his
power, the fact that he provokes fear in his brother elite, 

"fear not of Weissmann personally, but of the time
itself, a time so desperate that +he+ (P's italics) could
now move through the Mittlewerke as if he owned it, a time
which was granting him the power different from that of
Auschwitz or Buchenwald, a power the couldn't have born
themselves." GR.666 
 



> 
> Another facetious note is struck when the narrator comments: "Ordinarily,
> this would be Thanatz's notion of paradise, except ... " (665.5 up) Thanatz,
> of course, is homosexual (perhaps not exclusively, but that is his obvious
> sexual preference), and so of course an exclusively male homosexual
> community should be a place he would enjoy being in. However, the mentions
> of Dora and Blicero thoroughly spook him, and this affects his reaction to
> what the 175 tells him.

Yup, but the word "paradise" carries with it the "religious"
sense as well. Thanatz, his name, his role in this book, is
tied to Eros and Thanatos, Greek and Christian Myth...Brown,
Freud....repression. 

Blicero is also a name of Death. 

The text makes this clear as well. 

> 
> The Läufer is like the group's shaman, passing "messages ... between the
> visible Lager and the invisible SS." (666) The visible Lager is the
> community the 175s have set up, the invisible SS are the "*mean ass*
> imaginary Nazi playmates", a Pantheon of spiritual leaders with Blicero as
> the top god. I would imagine that the 175s felt terribly abandoned and
> betrayed by traditional religion (and particularly by the Catholic Church!),
> so I'd be surprised if any sort of Catholic orthodoxy was being alluded to
> here. And, at the end of the sequence, Thanatz himself becomes the Läufer.

Shaman, yes, I agree, 

AHD:
A member of certain tribal societies who acts as a medium
between the visible world and an invisible spirit world and
who practices magic or sorcery for purposes of healing,
divination, and control over natural events.

But the text says, he is the Bishop, dressed in red
vestment, a mock member of the clergy. The text makes this
clear. There is a religious element here that is essential. 
We cannot brush it aside, it's clearly stated in the text.
Later, we are told that the Rocket is the SOUL of the Church
and State. Pynchon, as Hollander, and other astute critics
have pointed out, studied Dante under one of America's most
esteemed Dante scholars. 


> 
> Some of the description of the 175s' camp is coloured by Thanatz's own fears
> and neuroses (cf. the observations about Blicero at 666.15-20: check out the
> rhetorical question and use of second person address which rounds out that
> paragraph. These provide a signal to the reader that the narrative here is
> being filtered through Thanatz). But Thanatz's pov is interweaved with more
> straightforward description of the chain of command, and by direct reportage
> from the "town spokesman" Thanatz ran into back at 665.30. In fact, that's
> pretty much all the sequence is, a conversation between this shadowy
> "charcoal-colored" spokesman and Thanatz.
> 
> best