What are these people about?

[jbor]

Terrance wrote:

> jbor wrote:
>> 
>> I think that Terrance is right in that the "many" who are watching are the
>> local townsfolk, the same "them" who might turn into a murderous mob at the
>> sight of Quaker garb.
> 
> But why would they turn on a Quaker?

Dixon is initially concerned that the locals have mistaken he and Mason for
"two Hirelings of their Landlord and Enemy, Mr. Penn." (341.20) The Dutch
Rifle is the first stop on their guided tour, and it is a "backwoodsman"
haunt. I think that in these parts Quakers are identified with the Penn
faction - the "Proprietors" - and are therefore much hated.

> One important thing I forget to
> mention is that this is the major township on the edge of the wilderness
> (Reform Church and German Pietists mostly) and not Philadelphia, which
> is where Dixon decides to make himself less conspicuous by putting on
> his Quaker garb and blending in. However, I'm still not sure why he
> would go as Mason. I should think the mob would be more apt to commit
> violence toward Mason.

Mason's clothing is nondescript, as you say, and not particularly stylish.
He wouldn't be mistaken for a Macaroni, nor for a Philadelphia Fop. At first
the locals are suspicious that the two are with the "Press", or are
"Drummers of some kind" (i.e. travelling salesmen), which is the angle Dixon
straight away picks up on. I think the danger in being "Hirelings" of Penn
and coming to visit the massacre site is that the locals might think the two
are there to try to bring the Paxton Boys to justice, or to stir up trouble
by writing a report in the city newspapers. The identification is
Quaker-Penn, and it's also another example of the city v. country divide.

snip
> And why does Dixon say that Mason is sticking out if he is not?

He is sticking out in Philadelphia because his hat and wig are shabby, are
not "adventurous enough". (303) Philadelphians are obviously extremely
fashion-conscious. Mason's drab attire wouldn't stick out at all in
Lancaster Town.

> It could be that Dixon is just pulling Mason's leg when he says that
> people are talking about his wig and his clothes and that there is
> little he can do to blend in. Again, I could read it as Dixon being a
> bit pissed about the Molly/Dolly sour apples thing and the lady's
> suggestion that Mason and Dixon are VERY CLOSE.

The sexual sub-text in the scene between Dolly and Dixon is a little more
complex than that. Dolly doesn't quite imply it, and even in interpreting
her words as a "Suggestion" of homosexuality I don't think Dixon is annoyed
at all - he makes a joke of it after all. (300.16)
 
> What provokes his disguise is not fear so much as common sense,
>> keeping his instinctive impulsiveness in check - something which he has only
>> lately learnt from his teacher.
> 
> So going as Mason could also imply keeping his natural inclination to
> seek adventure in check?

Dixon and Mason seek different sorts of "adventure" I think. Remember that
Mason is fascinated by the Gothick. A voyeur, he seeks out the grotesque and
gruesome. Dixon is much more inclined to adventures of the flesh. He has
only come along to Lancaster as his friend's bodyguard, and actually sleeps
in on the day when Mason visits the gaol. Note that it is Mason's
description ("Almost a smell") and his paleness - the inexplicable sensation
he has obviously experienced - which fires Dixon's enthusiasm to visit the
scene. (346.19)
 
>> 
>> I think that one difference between the situation here and later on, one
>> reason that Dixon does not prostrate himself and reveal his empathy with the
>> massacred Indians and thereby disclose his antagonism towards the townsfolk
>> who let it happen and who seem to have forgotten the event so quickly, is
>> that he can do nothing now to save those people, whereas in that moment with
>> the slave-owner later he can do something, and that there and then his
>> "faith" - in himself first and foremost - is restored.
> 
> He can't save them, but he never considers becoming a Christ.  No, they
> are dead. But he can pray. Or is prayer, like weeping or crying out with
> anger such a child's thing to do?

I think that in the context of the situation he realises that to fall to his
knees in prayer would be to expose his sympathies with the Indians and his
antagonism towards the local townsfolk, and thereby open himself to danger.
I guess he could just as easily have indulged in silent prayer, which is
sort of what he does anyway, isn't it? (347.18) And, even so, he "feels no
better for this Out-pouring". I think it's the feeling of powerlessness and
injustice which gets to him.

I don't agree that they have "forgotten their own histories" or that they
are being dishonest. I think it's the proximity and brutality of the
massacre that gets to them both, and they seek to escape from it as soon as
they possibly can. It is like Hell to them because it is as if God - any
sense of divine justice - has deserted this horrible place.
 
>> But I also think that the contempt which the characters feel at this point
>> is not so much for the Paxtons themselves as for these townsfolk who, it
>> seems to Mason, have drunk of "Lethe-water" (346.23), who have forgotten so
>> quickly that terrible massacre of some few months ago, who believe that some
>> (karmic) "Debt is paid" (344.1) by such brutal and unprovoked slaughter, who
>> quickly carry on with their petty personal and political squabbling as if
>> nothing at all had happened: "In America, Time is the true River that runs
>> 'round Hell." And, at chapter's end, it is indeed as if the lads are
>> climbing the rungs of a ladder out of Hell as they leave Lancaster Town.
> 
> Yes, just as in the Cape, but I still think the boys too have forgotten.
> Forgotten their own histories. Dixon thinking it must be something in
> the Wilderness that causes men to act with such brutality and Mason
> thinking some Lethe waters cause the people to forget the Debts they
> have amassed. 

The townsfolk believe that, with the massacre, the "Debt is paid" (344.1)
and over with for good. Mason is appalled at how soon the actual physical
atrocity has been forgotten and converted into such a materialistic
rationalisation. I think the "Debt" Mason refers to at 346.22 is something
more spiritual than the evening up of accounts which Jabez refers to at the
top of 346.

> Dixon thinks back only to the Romantic Feudal Raby.

And then to the brutalities he witnessed at the Cape. But these do not
compare. Nothing in his experience compares to this massacre - "far worse
happen'd here". (347.19)

>> (348) Cha and Jere's contempt for those who carried out the slaughter is not
>> as great (cf. 311.14 ff) as it is for those who watched it happen and who
>> then set about to justify it afterwards:
>> 
>> In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to
>> wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,--
>> even unto their own Dissolution. (346.24)
>> 
>> I think this is one of those moments when the sympathies of the characters
>> and text are in close alignment.
>> 
> 
> 
> It's easy, I think, to see the alignment, not so easy to see where the
> text is critical of our boys here.

You're right: I don't see it at all. Certainly Dixon wants to get the hell
out of there, and Mason, likewise, has already sought escape "guiltily" in
the pages of _The Ghastly Fop_, but these responses are quite understandable
imo. Honest admissions of an inability to cope with the horror.

I think Dixon is quite critical of his own reaction at 347-8, and his
physical revulsion and feeling of impotence are quite palpable.

Further, I'd compare the "honesty" of their reactions with the way that
Wicks tries to yoke Native American rituals to his Christian worldview at
385-6, and the sophistry with which he pontificates about Indian land rights
thereafter. His musings in the wake of the massacre are far less palatable
than either Mason's or Dixon's imo.

And I'd also note how Wicks merely "looks on with interest" (385.29) while
the feud between Armand and Dimdown is escalating, directly juxtaposed
against Mitzi offering up her virginity so that mortal combat between the
two men is averted. (385-6)

best

> I think they are not quite as
> innocent nor as honest as the text. So, they may climb their Jacob's
> ladder with regrets and they may carry on the work like Knights of the
> Kings who pay them. The text, I suspect, is more often aligned with the
> pawns, those who resist and stand stubbornly in the middle of the board
> like Mrs. Harland or those that slide themselves off the board
> altogether, like the  functionary at the Cape.