Fwd: MDDM Stig's tale & Powers (663) WAS Re: Gudrid's vision

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

I think that the narrative as a whole is realistic w/r/t the human
frailities of Mason & Dixon. They are paid agents of a variety of
institutional interests, after all, from "King's Men to Rockingham 
Whigs." Inspite of that, they are portrayed as remarkably open to
the possibility that their employers are not without some blame 
for the various and sundry forms of inhumanity they thereby
are led to encounter. It would be a shame if we, the readers, 
were to remain silent about those unsavory aspects of the tale.


In a message dated 7/25/02 2:16:11 PM, millison at online-journalist.com writes:

>>In M&D, at least, Pynchon gives the Native Americans  deep insight into the
nature of their relationship to the Europeans.  Pynchon does not show Mason
and Dixon responding to this observation. Perhaps they don't understand it
-- although Dixon had a similar  insight re the relationship of European to
Slaves back on p. 68, there's no sign he recalls it here on p. 663.  How
can Mason and Dixon respond?  They've seen a massacre, what the Paxton Boys
have done, and they've heard tales told to justify the violence that's been
visited on the Native Americans (the Ferryman's tale, which Pynchon would
seem to mock by turning it into a sob story in the _How the West Was Won_
justifying the genocide of the Native Americans as an inevitable result of
Manifest Destiny genre -- and in that instance Mason and Dixon realized
they were being manipulated and  called the story-teller on his Disneyfying
tactics), but they don't respond here.   Shamed silence, it seems to me.<<




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