MDDM Lambton Worm another Master/Slave tale

[jbor]

Terrance wrote:

> Dixon, who tells the tale, says, Christ won that day.
> 
> That's the moral of the story. While Mason, Wicks, even Shelby, can't
> get it. That's it.
> 
> That day, Christ won. The worm was destroyed, the people were saved.

Yes, although I'm not sure that Dixon's moral is necessarily the novel's
moral:

    "Why, Christ won, that Day...?" Dixon,-- whose present state of
    religiosity is a puzzle to everyone,-- appears to find it curious that
    anyone could think otherwise. (594.30)

religiosity = religiose adj. affectedly or extremely pious, sanctimoniously
religious

And Dixon does seem to have experienced a recent and quite sudden epiphany
about the consequences of his own travail, thanks to Shelby (587.1).

Wicks and Shelby attach rather different morals to the story. So, again, a
deliberate note of uncertainty in the text...?

A couple of points: Lambton is "damn'd in the instant" he throws the "Worm
into the Well" (589.2). Thus, the Transylvanian Oath is pretty much
immaterial, as you say.

Dixon's remark that the "river then was purer and wilder, not yet altogether
converted to the service of the Christian God" (588.8) seems to conflate the
collieries and industrialisation with Christianity. It's a pointed aside, in
keeping with Pynchon's environmentalist agenda.

best

> The
> father was not killed by the son and neither was the dog. Dogs being
> members of the family (VL).