MDDM Washington & Gershom

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>It's a
>master-slave relationship after all.

We seem to agree on this at least.


>But I don't recall anywhere in the text
>where GW attempts to or does "take away" either of these or any other of
>Gershom's privileges (i.e. his *liberties*).


"liberties" = privileges granted by the legal owner of an enslaved African
or African American, OK, if that's what  liberty means to you, the right of
property owners to treat their property as they wish.  Wicks would seem to
have something to say about that:


"Unfortunately, young people," recalls the Rev'd, "the word _Liberty_, so
unreflectively  sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass
even the darkest of Men's rights [...] This being, indeed and alas, one of
the Liberties our late War was fought to secure." (M&D, 307)


jbor:
And, though we've been over this about a million times already ...

...Your "Gershom's intervention" reading of the scene at Raleigh's
Billiard-Room in ch. 58 still doesn't make sense, because there's no reason
to believe that Gershom "intervene" in anything at all, because there's no
situation that requires "intervention", not the way I read the scene at
least.


jbor:
>At 572.28, to stop George's cover from being blown.


You read quite a bit into the scene in order to get to this interpretation,
but that's nothing new. There's nothing in the scene to indicate  that
Washington tries to conceal his identity. And, after Washington says "That
voice, Mason! 'tis my Tithable, Gershom!" (p. 572), Pynchon doesn't show
Washington doing or saying anything, nobody is pursuing him or addressing
him in any way, Gershom continues to tell jokes. Washington literally fades
from the scene.

jbor:
>Or are you definitively
>ruling out that possibility and insisting on how the text must be
>interpreted?


No. If that's what the scene means to you, go for it.  I don't find this
interpretation convincing in the least, but read it as you like.