MDMD Dixon's nonviolence

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
"But doesn't that sound just a little improbable and deceitful -"

No it doesn't.    It happens all the time, one man tries to attack another
and the potential victim manages to dodge the blow and the attacker goes on
to injure himself by falling or hitting something else -- it's a cliche in
TV programs, films, slapstick comedy and drama in all media, and I've seen
it happen in barrooms.  The attacker winds up hurting himself, because the
potential victim has managed to defend himself without resorting to
violence. Certain martial arts disciplines build on this fundamental
principle, of avoiding combat, or when that's not possible, letting the
attacker use his own force to incapacitate himself.

jbor:
"Sort of like saying that the tree collided with the car on your insurance
claim, or that the GIs walked into the Al Qaeda fighters' bullets, or that
the WTC towers "ran into" those two planes?"

Not the same at all.  Your examples here are obviously absurd and
unambiguous, while the situation that Pynchon creates is relatively
realistic with a degree of ambiguity. If Pynchon wanted to write that Dixon
punched the slave driver in the face, or if Pynchon had wanted to write
that Dixon used the whip to beat the slave driver to a bloody pulp, I
expect Pynchon would have written it that way, but he chooses not to and
writes the scene we have in before us:  Dixon refrains from acting out his
murderous urge even as the slave driver fails to refrain his own urge to
assault Dixon and thus runs into Dixon's upraised but stationary fist, just
as the slave driver himself has apparently been unable to refrain from
mistreating and injuring his helpless slaves.

Your comparison fails at another level.  Dixon confronts a man, not a tree
or bullets.  Obviously, the trees don't often  jump out in front of the car
(although I do know of a tragic case where a man was sitting in his pickup
truck at a red light in Berkeley and a tree at the side of the road fell
over at just that moment and crushed him to death).

Your bullet example would work better if you used the Bush Administration's
crocodile tears response to "collateral damage", their wicked euphemism for
innocent civilians killed as a result of concious decisions to use weapons
and tactics with a demonstrated margin of error.  I believe Secretary of
War Rumsfeld has actually said something to the effect that those Afghani
civilians ran into American bullets, or has expressed a similar sentiment,
blaming the civilians for being in the wrong place at the right time or
insinuating that they are not in fact innocent civilians.

Are you arguing that Pynchon is advancing the notion that a violent
response to injustice is justified? I don't think you can support that with
textual evidence from M&D.   And, if that's what you are arguing, how does
that square with your perennial argument that Pynchon does not make such
choices or judgements, that he leaves things open and ambiguous letting the
reader make her own interpretation, reach her own conclusion?