Chapter 45: Body & Soul

[Terrance]

The notion that a man is a soul contained in a body is a false idea that
comes from Plato, who viewed the body as the prison of the soul. We
occasionally
speak of the body in this way (2 Cor. 5:1-4), but this language is not
to be pressed.
The twentieth-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle was wrong when he said
Christians view man as "a ghost in a machine." It would have been more
accurate to say
man is a ghost and a machine. 

This makes it clear that expressions of pop culture that imply men can
become angels, such as the songs "Johnny Angel" and "Teen Angel" or the
movie
"It's a Wonderful Life," are misleading on this point, whatever their
other
merits may be. 

	-Catholic Encyclopedia


Like Carl Barrington of "The Secret Integration", the more
  V. functions as an abstract entity, the more she becomes
  inanimate and non-human. The processes are co-extensive.
  V.'s transformations (identity changes) are directly related
  to the development of the major themes in the novel. These
  major themes can be grouped under the term "enfetishment."
  Enfetishment, is an ironic process because it invests the
  inanimate with human characteristics and inanimates human
  subtleties, first by divesting human characteristics through
  reification and then reinvests them with pseudo-human
  characteristics, turning them into fetishes in the process. 
  They become artificial objects posing as humans, a poor
  substitute for humanity, yet fully acceptable in the
  decadent world or in Fausto's terms, a world "moving towards
  non-humanity." This non-humanity is not, as so many have
  argued, simply Pynchon's Borgs or Terminators,
  human/machines, humans with plastic parts.  The process is
  not mechanical and the humans are not machines, but are
  humans in a world that no longer recognizes or in is the process of
losing 
   their humanity.


  In his essay, "Is it OK to be a Luddite," Pynchon defends
  science fiction, the luddite genre, the gothic, and in the
  course of his defense, explains how his own fiction is
  constructed and what his concerns are. His concern is not
  machines, but humans. In V., Benny Profane has an imaginary
  conversation with SHROUD about Elmira's junkyards and
  Hitler's Auschwitz: "Remember, Profane, how it is on Route
  14, south, outside Elmira, New York? You walk
and see the
  setting sun on a junkpile. Acres of old cars. If I could
  die, that's what my graveyard would look like."  



  A few paragraphs after Benny's conversation with Shroud,
  Esther has a conversation with Schoemaker: "You want to
  change me into something I'm not," she argues. "In return he
  could only argue a kind of ***Platonism*** at her." "It was her
  soul, he loved." "her soul would be there on the outside,
  radiant, unutterably beautiful." 



" 'Twas his own Hubris,--the old mad Philosopher story, we
  all know, meddl'd where he shouldn't have, till laws of the
  unforeseen engaged,"  M&D.373

 

  "if Angels be the next higher being from Man, perhaps the
  Duck had 'morphos'd into some Anatine Equivalent, acting as
  my Guardian,--purely as an Angel might
"  M&D.379




  THE BLUE ANGEL
  Allen Ginsberg, Dream, Patterson, Mid-1950

  Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament
  For mechanical love.
  She leans against a mortarboard tree
  On a plateau by the seashore.

  She's a life sized toy,
  The doll of eternity:
  Her hair is shaped like an abstract hat
  Made out of white steel.

  Her face is powdered, whitewashed and
  Immobile like a robot.
  Jutting out of her temple, by an eye, 
  Is a little white key.

  She gazes through dull blue pupils
  Set in the whites of her eyes.
  She closes them and the key
  Turns by itself.

  She opens her eyes, and they're blank
  Like a statues in a museum.
  Her machine begins to move, the key turns
  Again, her eyes change, she sings

  --you'd think I would have thought a plan
  to end the inner grind, 
  but  not till I have found a man
  to occupy my mind.