MDMD: Dixon's act of nonviolence

[Doug Millison]

 Terrance:
"Men are violent by Nature he says,
himself included."


...and Dixon-- the always complex and sometimes contradictory character, as
T rightly observes --  shows us how to overcome those violent tendencies:
pull the punch, consult your conscience, choose to stop the cycle of
violence instead of escalating it, remove the weapon so the perpetrator can
no longer use it to harm others, set the victims free and give them a
chance to get away. It's a struggle to overcome one's violent tendencies,
but Dixon shows us that it's possible, and he shows us how to do it.

I'm *guessing* that Pynchon was paying attention to folks like his best
friend's sister-in-law and the many, many others of his generation who
embraced nonviolence in the '60s.  Mason and Dixon draw the line that comes
to signify the division between slave and free, a distinction that led to a
bloody civil war. If more people had stood up to the social injustice of
slavery the way Pynchon's invented Dixon does, perhaps that bloody civil
war might have been avoided.