re re Re MDMD Dixon's nonviolence

[Doug Millison]

I guess I'm not surprised that Terrance is not addressing the text here,
regarding Dixon: page 397, where Dixon makes this straightforward
announcement and explanation of his pacifist stance, when challenged to
fight:

"Did they tell You I was a Quaker, Sir, and would not fight?"

Thus setting up his encounter with the slave driver later in the novel
where, after consulting with his conscience, he manages to suppress his
murderous urge and refrains from fighting, injuring, or killing the slave
driver:

"[...] Dixon still greatly desires to kill the Driver, cringing there among
the Waggon-Ruts.  What's a man of Conscience to do? It is frustrating."
[699]

Instead of hitting or killing him, Dixon takes the whip, which then passes
down to his descendents, and frees the slaves.  In the terms of today's
discourse on nonviolence, Dixon has chosen a non-violent approach here,
suppressing his urge to violence.

I don't think that Dixon is consciously thinking through and choosing a
nonviolent approach here.  I think Pynchon makes him a man who, when the
moment comes where he finds himself in such a situation, Pynchon's "Dixon"
naturally consults and follows his conscience, and naturally chooses a
nonviolent action.  What kind of a man is Pynchon's Dixon?  He's a man who,
in the heat of the moment and when given the choice, chooses not to yield
to his impulse to kill as a means to stop the slaves' suffering, who
chooses instead to stop the cycle of violence, which he does when he pulls
his punch -- that takes a conscious act of will, you know, to pull a punch
in the heat of anger.  Then he consults his conscience, takes the whip, and
departs.

I make an interpretive leap when I put Dixon's nonviolence on p 698 in the
context of the Lambton Worm story, and Dixon's announcement of his pacifism
on page 397, added to that the fact that Pynchon appears to have rewritten
the historical record, then twisted it all together and concluded that
Pynchon is trying to say something significant about nonviolence.  I don't
think this is an unreasonable or particularly far-fetched interpretation.
But please feel free to disagree.

Pynchon's text makes your argument look rather weak.  If I were you, I'd
see about buttressing your claims, instead of abandoning them and launching
ad hominem attacks instead. Insults don't prove your argument.