MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[Dave Monroe]

Apparently, whether or not Pynchon's Dixon--vs.
Robinson's, or the Dixon of lore, much less The
Historical Jeremiah Dixon ...--actually whips the
slave driver is another bone of contention here, or so
someone who isn't one of whom I presume are the
principal combatants here tells me ...  

So please ev'rybody consider this as being offered in
the spirit of a neutral, non-partisan, close--
actually, perfectly straightforward, but ...--reading
of the episode in question.  If it agrees with one but
not the other of you, well, it's what the text
actually says, no more, no less, is all.  I'll leave
any claims for its further significance to the rest of
you.  All citations from M&D, Ch. 72, pp. 698-9 ...

The short answer is, Dixon doesn't whip the Driver. 
Dixon "seizes the Whip," "rais[es] the Whip," tells
the Driver to "'Turn around,'"threatens (?) that he's
"going to kill [the Driver]...?,'" tells him then to
"face me, and make it easier, or must I rather work
upon you from the Back,'" "still greatly desires to
kill the Driver," "shakes the Whip at him," "Thrust[s]
the Whip into his red Coat," but not once here does he
actually whip the Driver.  When the Driver says to
Dixon, "'You broke my Tooth,'" his Tooth was broken
when "Dixon place[d] his Fist in the way of the
[Driver's] oncoming Face" and momentum took its course
...

Do not be misled by Dixon's "'I'll guess you never
felt this'" preceeding the Driver's "'You broke my
Tooth!'"  The Tooth, again, is already broken (or so
the Driver claims, at any rate ...) by the time Dixon
"raises the Whip" and issues his
speculation/(ultimately, unrealized) threat, the
Driver having "stumble[d] away," his Face having
presumably (and here I'm perfectly willing to let the
mechanics which Pynchon would know well fill in an
unwritten event) collided with that "place[d] Fist." 
The Driver has not been Whipped here, nor will he be,
at least not in Pynchon's text ...

Robinson's Dixon, on the other hand, takes a more Old
Testament/Eumenidean (cf. Aeschylus' Oresteia on the
shift from blood vengeance to justice, from the
vendetta of the clans and the Furies to the law of the
polis and Athena) line on vengeance, whereas Pynchon's
Dixon ultimately and significantly turns away from his
"desire to kill" ...

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