MDMD Dixon's act of nonviolence

[Doug Millison]

My quibble with jbor's formulation below is the use of the word "brute" to
describe force.  In fact, Dixon's use of force appears measured and
thoughtful -- he pulls the punch instead of following it through, and after
consulting his conscience he decides not to inflict any further harm, takes
the whip so the slave driver can't harm the slaves with it, with some stern
parting words (which the slave driver mocks -- apparently not taking them
for a serious death threat).  Dixon uses just enough force to prevent
further harm to these slaves in this situation, having resisted his urge to
kill the slave driver, and he appears to use the force in a thoughtful way
-- stopping to think about it -- instead of proceeding as an unthinking
brute intent only on inflicting violence to effect the desired change in
the slave driver's behavior.

Pynchon may or may not have had in mind, as he finishes M&D in the
early-to-mid '90s, the Vietnam War or  the more recent Gulf War. but a good
example of brute force and violence (as opposed to the smart, judicious use
of force in nonviolence that Dixon exhibits) would be carpetbombing --
that's brute force with no obvious concern for the consequences to innocent
bystanders, and with no concern for the possibility of reconciliation with
the enemy, for the possibility of finding creative ways to resolve
differences.    Dixon's use of force is categorically different, congruent
in many ways with the principles of nonviolence that became widely known,
in the U.S., in the '50s and '60s (the period in which Pynchon comes of age
as a writer), in the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the US.

Pynchon Notes has published an interesting article on the relationship of
Pynchon's texts to the discourse of environmentalism beginning in the late
'50s (taking, if I remember correctly, the book _Silent Spring_ as a
starting point).  I suggest that an equally interesting article could be
written on the relationship of Pynchon's texts to the discourse of
nonviolence; I'm thinking in particular of Vineland and Mason &  Dixon, but
I expect GR, V. and COL49 offer much in this vein as well.


>Pynchon acknowledges
> through his portrayal of Dixon's "act" that the only way to begin to achieve
> "justice" in certain extreme situations of injustice and violence is to
> neutralise the adversary's potential to do violence through an initial act of
> brute force