more re MDDM Dixon's act of violence

[jbor]

on 14/3/02 5:36 AM, Scott Badger at lupine at ncia.net wrote:

> Doug:
>> The question none of you has answered satisfactorily is, if Dixon is such
> a
>> violent man and so prone to betray his Quaker upbringing, why didn't he
>> beat the slave driver with the whip or kill him as he desired to do?  The
>> answer, I suggest, is that he discovers (a major development in the arc of
>> his character development in the novel) his conscience won't let him,
>> precisely as Pynchon describes it in the passage in question.
> 
> ...or, as I have stated before, if Dixon were to have stuck around to finish
> the job, he would have run the probable risk of being arrested (as advised
> by the slave immediately before he and Mason leave), if not a beating by the
> Sheriff's men or the crowd as well. You are assuming that "conscience"
> refers to a choice between violence and non-violence, I read it as referring
> to a choice between self-preservation and dealing with the slave-driver in
> the manner that Dixon feels he deserves.

I think it's also pretty clear from the evidence in the text that Dixon
beats the man with the whip. But I do think his conscience is telling him
not to kill the man at 699.18 (as well as telling him that he *must* kill
the man if he means to prevent him from continuing in his vile profession),
or that's the way the narrator frames it with the rhetorical question. Dixon
chooses not to kill him - his "voice breaks", he makes a meaningless threat
which he has no way of carrying through on - and the slave-driver's
arrogance is immediately restored. Mason will still recognise what Dixon did
as an act of Bravery (698.3), however.

best