MDDM Ch. 66 Stig's Tale: An Interpretation

[jbor]

It's interesting that Pynchon has paired Stig's brief recount of the tale of
Thorfinn Karlsefni from 'The Greenlander Saga' with Capt. Zhang's version of
the story of Hsi and Ho from the ancient Confucian 'Shu King'. Putting aside
the obvious plot resonances, it's worthwhile considering why fragments from
these two quite "foreign" and atypical or marginalised oral traditions have
found a place in this narrative of 'America'.

There's another connection between Stig and Capt. Zhang's tale of ancient
Chinese astronomy. In some Chinese traditions the yin/yang duality seems to
be related to, or even to have derived from, the mythology of the eclipse.

http://user.icx.net/~drherb/yinyang.html

Early on we are told that, "[a]t least once in every sentence" Stig says
"Yingle-Yangle! Yingle-Yangle!" (455-6), which is both a parody of a
stereotypical Scandinavian accent and an allusion to yin/yang.

It's important to remember that Patience Eggslap is a procuress and a
prostitute herself (456, 546), although she does seem to warm to Stig once
he reveals himself as a fluent English speaker and something of a
quasi-Jacobite revolutionary or provocateur (611.25). Of course, her
complaint about him bringing his axe to bed has been an ongoing one
(456.19), and she refers to him as "some piece o' logging machinery with an
Erection". I'd say it's more along the lines of a Freudian/phallic joke on
Pynchon's part than anything else.

>From the primary sources which Pynchon has used here it is evident that
these first Norse settlers in "Vineland the Good" were peaceful, or
portrayed as peaceful, or intending to live peacefully. I think it's very
unlikely that Stig, or the saga which his story is based on, would be
purposely casting these Norsemen in an unflattering light. Of course, as
with Wicks or any other of the tale-tellers, it's important to keep in mind
who's telling the story and why. But the evidence in the text is
overwhelming. The "Skraellings" approach the settlers to "trade pelts for
Milk. But what they really want are weapons". Thorfinn has "forbidden"
anyone to sell them, and the Norse settlement is *defensively* barricaded by
a "Palisado and [...] Sentries". It is "[u]pon the second visit" (i.e. of
the "Skraellings") that the feminine apparition presents itself to Gudrid,
presumably as a diversion, for "one of the Skraellings" attacks "one of the
Northmen" and violence, and then a pre-emptive attck by the Norse settlers,
ensues. It is this chain of events which "announc[es] ... the collapse of
Vineland the Good." (633-4)

There's no evidence *anywhere* to suggest that violence and murder were
unknown amongst indigenous North Americans prior to the arrival of
Europeans, or that they'd never used "weapons" of some description, whether
in pre-Columbian times or after 1492. Further, there's no suggestion
anywhere in _M&D_ or in the primary source material that the Norse settlers
were doing any "enslaving" of Native Americans. It takes a bit of a twisting
of Pynchon's text ("the 'new' Continent Europeans found had been long
attended, from its own ancient Days, by murder, slavery, and the poor
Fragments of a Magic irreparably broken" 612) to read the Norsemen as some
analog for evil modern imperialists in this particular instance, and as the
source material indicates and the novel implies, some of the settlers were
killed by the Native Americans too. The Norsemen do no enslaving, and it's
their "Magic" which seems to have been broken. In the novel the settlers
leave "Vineland" in "Despair" after the bloody battle "upon the Headland",
but it's because they feel ashamed, as if they've  "Dishonor[ed] ... the
Gods and Heroes" of their culture. That some are themselves "captur'd and
enslav'd" in Ireland on the return journey is the tragic and ironic end to
the whole venture.

Watching a program the other night on anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum's
return to the Peruvian jungle after his first visit in the late 50s or early
60s when he lived and ate with a group of cannibals, it's more likely that
it's this notion of "murder" which is the European import rather than the
act itself.

http://www.keeptheriver.com/

As far as the female apparition of "Gudrid" is concerned, I'm not sure what
the source of that particular element of the story is, though it's pretty
clear that the figure is an ill omen of some sort, and one which is
connected with the "Skraellings".

best