Chapter 45: The Duck and Slothrop

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> These quotes (good choices, Dave) make me think of Slothrop.  Constructed by
> Them, he transforms into a force beyond Their control, becoming a fugitive
> who MUST be caught, brought back under control.  Like the duck's 'morphosis,
> Slothrop also becomes more and more invisible until finally opinions vary as
> to whether he ever actually existed.  I don't think these parallels are
> accidental.

 Reminds me of the Luddite essay too. In fact, that's where Pynchon
explains how the duck and  Slothrop and V and  Carl Barington are
constructed. It's not a mechanical process really, but something very
deep and Freudian and haunting. 

Hawthorne. Always reminds me of that house and the land it was built on. 


The duck, we could say, starts off as a bunch of parts assembled, but
there is more to the assembly than parts, so like Slothrop and V and
Barrington, the more the duck comes to function as an abstract entity
(and a golem, and I'll have to define the golem because I know this term
has many meanings, including several in M&D) the more inanimate and
non-human it becomes. The duck, has become an angel, for example. ANd
has taken on abstractions like angels after the  "the death of god"  as
Otto noted  and abstractions of time/space. The two processes
(functioning as abstract entity and becoming inanimate an non-human) are
coextensive. V’s changing identity drives some of the major themes of
the novel, such as history, politics, race, manifest destiny, and so on
and the same is true of both Slothrop and Barrington. So, being Pynchon,
it should not suprize us to see sex and religion in the mix. Do Angels
have sex? 
Or are they only an Enfetishment? Are angels, like the Octopus in GR,
named after an the Angels who only "stand and wait" or watch, now,
neither male nor female or both id you don't mind, history ass
Voyeurism?  

  Carl had been put together out of phrases, images, possibilities that
grownups
  had somehow turned away from, repudiated, left out at the edges of
towns, as
  if they were auto parts in Etienne’s father’s junkyard—things they
could or
  did not want to live with but which the kids, on the other hand, could
spend
  endless hours with, piecing together, rearranging, feeding,
programming,
  refining. He was entirely theirs, their friend and robot, to cherish,
buy
  undrunk sodas for, or send into danger, or even, as now, at last, to
banish
  from their sight.

  

Attenuated Ghosts and Angels. 
Mama said there would be Angels. 
And picking up an Angel who just arrived here fom the coast
who looked just fine at first but left lookin just like a ghost.