re MDMD: America

[Doug Millison]

Overcoming the natural desire to kill or injure, and instead find other
ways to resolve differences, is what nonviolence is all about, and I expect
that Pynchon is quite conscious of this as he creates this scene.  Dixon
may want to play executioner, he obviously feels a mix of impulses and
desires, but he manages to stop himself from injuring or killing (Pynchon
is quite clear that the slave driver runs into the upraised fist).  That's
what the Paxton Boys were unable to do.  People who teach nonviolence and
who use it for social change are quick to acknowledge that this is
precisely the struggle: how to overcome the desire to kill or injure and
instead find creative, nonviolent ways to effect the desired change,
reconciliation instead of combat.  I find it interesting that Pynchon
creates this episode, freights it with ambiguity, gives the reader the
opportunity to contrast it with the earlier massacre, and comes back to
this theme of fighting to kill the evil other in the Lambton Worm story
later.

At 9:44 AM -0500 3/7/02, Scott Badger wrote:
[...] In any case, my point
>is that Dixon's DESIRE and intent is to both injure and kill. [...]