Rocket-structure.2

[Terrance]

The appearance of the Anubis, which is named for "the
dog-headed death of Egypt, and for Wagner's  Flying
Dutchman, with its United or League of Nations, just like
the one here at Fopple's, floats toward "salvation" but in
P's terms, it
sails against entropy. On this ship of Death, a child must
be murdered, a
ritual murder,  the rocket-structure demands the Death of a
child, a
Gottfried, and it is a  political murder that has, as the
narrator explains later,
referencing Caesar, JFK, Malcolm X, replaced human
sacrifice.


The social world of the ship includes  Morituri A re-worked
Mondaugen? 

He stoically observes the sadistic orgy of the other
passengers, an "organized anarchy, " where pleasure "becomes
life's only business"--pleasure, however, that is
indistinguishable from rape, murder, unbridled
aggression. 

Slothrop is able to leave the ship of death, but he has lost
her. Here is a mock
Orpheus, he has simply lost her, she is not in the
underworld. His second appearance on the boat forces him to
see what has happened. He didn't look back. Oh the Irony! 
But not to worry boys, shortly after leaving the
boat, Slothrop will mostly forget  this tragedy. Nothing is
connected, anti-paranoia. This sounds like a moral position
to me, and not simply a moralist's reading of the novel. 

Anyway, it is this ability to forget that constitutes the
tragedy of Slothrop. The one way trip, or the false return,
are the usual possibilities under the "present
dispensation", which can be associated with patterns 
and their effect on the lives of
the characters. Springer, in his rollicking way, refers to
the patterns when Anton Webern's tragic death is brought
up; 

Slothrop remarks,  

 "It was a mistake. He was innocent."
"Ha. Of course he was.   But mistakes
are part of it too--everything fits.
One sees how it fits, ja? learns patterns,
adjusts to rhythms, one day you are no
longer an actor, but free now, over on
the other side of the camera. No dramatic 
call to the front office--just waking
up one day and knowing that Queen, Bishop,
and King are only splendid cripples, and
pawns, even those that reach the final
row, are condemned to creep in two dimensions, 
and no tower will ever rise or descend--no: 
flight has been given only to the Springer!"

Only to the Springer! Only? The Springer reminds me of 
Humpty Dumpty at times. I have noted here in the margin,
that  Spriger seems to be in the habit of ending these
eccentric
proclamation with ONLY I. 

He claims he is the only one that knows, as in the ultimate
"those that know", and whatsmore he is the only one who
understands it All. Why does he, like H. Adams, Stencil,
others, refer to himself in the third person? This seems to
corrupt his credibility. 

He seems to be performing the role of the fool, who can
pithily comment on the narrative action in the book and in
so doing Springer does point to the way that even seemingly
random events are part of an overall determined structure of
causality.