Ch. 39 "he saw none"

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 12:45 AM
Subject: Re: Ch. 39 "he saw none"
>
>   In all Virginia, though Slaves pass'd before his Sight, he saw none.
>  *That* was what had not occurr'd. It was all about something else,
>   not Calverts, Jesuits, Penns, nor Chinese. (398.5)
>
> I take this to mean that Jere had not really noticed the injustice of
> slavery, or that he had simply taken the institution of slavery for
> granted,
> during this early trip south, and that Wicks (or the narrator) is
> reaffirming for Ives (and the reader) what is significant in the tale of
> Dixon's progress he is relating to the listeners.
>
> I think that one important subtext of _M&D_ is to do with slavery and the
> American Civil War, and that these episodes with Dixon's growing awareness
> of the injustice of slavery and of the need to take an active stand
> against
> it play out as a microdrama of the lead-up to that violent and bloody time
> in American history. I think that one question being asked in the text is
> whether the abolition of slavery in America could have been achieved
> without
> a resort to war and bloodshed, such as that which did actually occur.
>
> best
>
> >
> > Returning to the Harland farm Jere reflects on the pointlessness of his
> trip,
> > and soon breaks into song. A cryptic final paragraph details what was
> not
> > seen, what the trip was not about, what "had not occurr'd".
>
> best
>

North versus South

Agreed that slavery is one of the most prominent topics in M&D, see for
example Ch. 11, the meditation upon punishment and commerce, but on the
death penalty too. This not only connects capitalism to slavery and the
hangings but calls this connection inevitable:

"(...) for Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable, whilst Slavery must ever
include, as an essential Term, the Gallows, --Slavery without the Gallows
being as hollow and Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without a Cross."
(108.26-30).

Or it can lead us to meditate about the fact that even today in America
black people are primarily the victims of the death penalty.

If it's about the Civil War, and I admit I didn't saw that immediately, then
maybe this way that the myth of the Civil War as a noble war to free the
slaves is rejected, and in my opinion not so much about how the slaves could
have been freed some other way.

In fact the Civil War has been fought about the question of who would own
the West, a Second American Revolution between the industrialized North and
the feudal South and in this sense I see indeed that there is a connection
to M&D: since 1820 the Mason-Dixon line had become the borderline between
the Slave states and the North, from 1827 on there were trade tariffs on
cotton, hemp, iron and other primarily Southern products. I cannot help
thinking that all of this leads my view towards naked, brutal economy and no
deity determinating the lives of the people.

So Harland's Shilling sends Mason North and Dixon South (393), the future
division of the colonies by the Mason-Dixon line is anticipated. We here
about Grenville's Stamp Act (the first step to the uprising) but nothing
about conspiracy theories (as some people still want us to believe), no
French agents, Jesuits or Freemasons (394). We learn how Thomas Jefferson
got his "Pursuit of Happiness" (395), the American promise to everybody,
except if you're Red or Black.

Otto