MDDM Dixon's act of violence

[David Morris]

This is such a beautiful and obviously important passage in MD.  Thank you.

Pynchon, in all his works, has never preached pacifism.  His sympathies are 
clearly with ACTION, but he knows that such action usually
results in martyrdom, death in the Street, in the orchestrated ballet of the 
Daisy-Chain of power.  He idealizes this fight.  His "sheep" (and pigs) are 
those masses of us who are pushed around and haven't the will/power to bite 
back.  He obviously feels strongly for both the hero and the victim, and 
maybe even for the villain.  Simplistic morality is not Pynchon.

David Morris

>From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Well, I'd say the point of the whole episode is that he doesn't remain 
>faithful to his Quaker principles, for once. As the narrator prefaces the 
>incident in the text:
>
>       Say then, that Mason at last came to admire Dixon for his Bravery,-- 
>a different sort than they'd shown each other years before, on the 
>*Seahorse* where they'd had no choice. Nor quite the same as they'd both 
>exhibited by the Warrior Path. Here in Maryland they had a choice at last, 
>and Dixon chose to act, and Mason not to,-- unless he had to,-- what each 
>of us wishes he might have the unthinking Grace to do, yet fails to do. To 
>act for all those of us who have so fail'd. For the Sheep. ... (698.3)



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