MDMD Elytra White

[Terrance]

So far in its Life, it has never seen Rain, tho' now it can feel
something undeniably on the way, something it cannot conceive of,
perhaps as Humans apprehend God,-- as a Force they are ever just about
to be aquatinted with.... 

"It is not a message from any Beyond Mason knows of. It is an
introduction to the Rainy Season." 89

But why is the Elytra "the same unforgiving **white** as the great
sand-waste... 88

Why white? I guess there is a biological explanation, it is white dues
to some natural selection or whatever, but when the girls look down at
the Town, the Beetles are in Song and we get, 

"And who gazes back upon it (the Town, a Spectacle in a Museum of
Marvels), too long or even too sentimentally, may never see it again. Or
may turn to Salt, and be white for Eternity." 

So, Pynchon is in the book of Genesis again. One of his favorite
stories, the story of Lot. 

Note, that the Vroom girls, as Austra sees it,  owe a debt to the
African women. That debt is their (white?) virginity.  Debt, in the
biblical sense, is what woman owe to men. Lot had two virgin daughters. 

 Note that the Mother of the Vroom girls seems to turn into some kind of
fiend, her blond hair turns white to invisible and her her mouth and
nipples black as ash. 

ANd this Chapter, like previous chapters, is a double chapter (Chapter 9
and 10), a Pynchon technique. 

So what P up to? 

The story of Lot is also found in the Koran. 


The Beetles: 


http://www.cal-pe.com/scarabs.htm