MDDM Ch. 10 Aunt Euphy and the Bull's-Eye

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> The Bull's Eye is referenced (by Austra) at 91.25, to describe to the Vroom
> girls the altered view of the colony as they walk up the mountainside: "That
> is all it takes, to deliver them into Africa". (91.9) In this sense it is
> the term used for a thick disc or boss of glass, such as one set into a
> ship's deck to admit light. Hence a bull's-eye lantern is also called a
> bull's-eye. (Brewer's)
> 
> So, the reference to the Bull's-Eye as "sovereign" at 99.26 indicates that
> Austra's overview from outside the colony holds sway *within* the colony for
> a time, that the Dutch masters are able or somehow compelled to see things
> from her perspective (that of the Slaves, the Drosters), and so act with
> more humility and compassion and less condescension to those they oppress.
> 
> Austra's point of view and voice are taken up in the narrative on quite a
> few occasions, as with her scathing but unspoken comment about the Vroom
> girls mounting "debit" to "African Women". (90.34)

The first Bull's Eye is in page 87. 
It seems to me that this is some sort of atmospheric phenomenon. Mason
and Vrou Vroom, in an upper bed chamber in the afternoon, a strange dark
cloud with a red center appears over Table Mountain followed almost
immediately by the northwester.  

The second Bull's Eye is on page 91. 
Afternoon, the storm approaching and the girls follow Mason up the first
slopes of the Mountain. Greet notices the light. 

"For the Sun is darkening rapidly, whilst striking to a remarkable
Hellish Red that not so long ago were reflecting the simple Day-Light." 

I suspected that the first bull's eye  was an atmospheric  phenomenon,
perhaps brought on by the approaching northwester. 

And then Austra's says, 

"What? - Never been this close to the Bull's eye?" Austra smiles grimly.
"Welcome to the Droster Republic, Misses." 

When I was a kid, I lived in a very bad neighborhood in the South Bronx.
I went to a school with kids from very good neighborhoods, some from the
Bronx, others from Manhattan. Sometimes kids would come home with me
after school. I would take them to a park behind my building or up on
the roof. I'd let them get a good look around, wait for them to say
something like, "is it safe here, shouldn't we be heading back?" and I'd
say, "What? - we just got here. Welcome to hell." 

Anyway, I think this is the kind of lark  Austra is pulling on the
girls. Stay close to me, I'll protect you, you wimps.  And,  as she
can't help but think of the debt they owe to her and African woman, she
frightens them with a little folklore. 

"Up here, some believe the Bull's Eye lives, and goes about
selecting
those it shall take."  

They are frightened and they run to as the storm breaks seeking shelter
with Mason and Dixon. 

The Bull's Eye does seem to have the power to select. Elect might be the
better term. It's the clam before the storm. And Austra may have been
trying to frighten the girls with folklore, but it seems that the Bull's
Eye is sovereign in the Mountains. 

The third Bull's Eye is page 99. 
" In the Mountains, the Bull's Eye is sovereign." 
It is sovereign in the Mountains, not in the town. The town has been
transformed, in part, by the Bull's Eye's selection, the storm's
purification, the Beetles, the sin unto death conversion. However, Sodom
and Gomorrah have not been destroyed and it lapses into sin after a
brief period of rectitude.    

Huguenots? Now that would connect these folks with Catholicism and Cape
Town Afrikaner Calvinism. 
hmmmmmm. And Wicks? Judy? 


> 
> > The man paints a picture of a
> > community of slippery hypocrites, no? Perhaps it's heavenly accounting.

Hypocrisy is the least of their sins. "UNTO DEATH" But Pynchon subverts
Genesis, there is no destruction by fire, only a purification, a
seasonal flood, a brief period when the Bull's Eye is sovereign on the
Mountain and fear of God rules the Cape Town-- A sustained paradoxical
agon. Is it in vain? 

"All is struggle, -- and all but occasionally in vain." MD67
He's only halfway to a Hindoo, is Dixon. 

Thanks for the posts Judy and jbor, agree on Bonk.