Punch and Judy

[Terrance]

Scott Badger wrote:
> 
> Terrance:
> > Could be or could be he is frightened. Yeah, he's afraid. So he won't go
> > in Quaker garb or in red coat, he will go as Mason and he will not kneel
> > for fear of having his head chopped off.
> 
> Who is the "many" that are watching? Is there really a crowd (tourists?
> staff? loiterers?) at the jail? Both Mason's and Dixon's experiences seem
> like very private affairs. Dixon didn't seem too worried about "sticking his
> neck out" back at the Dutch Rifle.
> 
> Scott Badger


I think that Dixon is frightened and yet, and this is the reason I'm
bringing this up, I'm not quit sure why he won't pray. It does remind me
of Slothrop's fall into a certain numbing immorality when he stops
praying to God in the conventional manner and begins to open his mind to
a dream, a certain mindless pleasure, or maybe, in Dixon-Quaker terms,
(inverting William Blake) sleep of Quaker conscience.  RC has the Field
Book and Ives complains that from the field book RC is reading at the
opening of the chapter, it appears that Mason went alone, but RC says,
well, I was not there (the Cigar scene...etc), but Dixon told me that
Mason may not have wanted the company of his assistant, but when he gave
thought to traveling alone into a town notorious for Atrocity, he
decided to bring the big strong Quaker along. When they get there (they
don't get to see the site together) we learn that it has become a
tourist attraction, a sort of hands on museum/amusement park like the
Holocaust one that Slothrop visits where Enzian's white stain is his
ejaculation or maybe bleach (ha, with all the countless allusions and
puns on that word in GR), and that people often bring Sketching-books,
Specimen-bags....

Anyways, Dixon, after Mason has visited the site and shared his Moment
with his partner, decides not to put on either his Quaker clothes or his
red coat. He says the Quaker outfit will send **them** (this is at the
bottom of page 346) into a war-like frenzy, while the Redcoat will
strike them as creeping, unable to be trusted...

So I think (and previously Dixon and Mason discussed how the locals are
talking about their clothes, particularly their wigs) that there is a
crowd and that Dixon fears that they may do violence to his person. But
is odd that he goes AS MASON. Quakers are still engaged in all sorts of
horrors in America, including both slavery and Indian killing, so why
his Quaker outfit (recall earlier that Dixon changes to Quaker clothes
from Redcoat so as to blend into the crowd of the thousands of other
Quakers) would stir up war-like frenzy is not clear to me, but it could
be (note the language RC chooses here is definitely Quaker (awakening of
Quaker conscience and so forth) Woolman's 1753 and so on...., but why
choose to go as Mason, when on page 303 Dixon says that Mason's hat and
wig make him a public interest (of course I think it's very possible
that Dixon is pulling Mason's leg and not a a little pissed off because
he hasn't gotten any from Dolly). 

Gotta go, thanks Scott...