Pynchon as propaganda

[jbor]

    There were men called "army chaplains." They preached
    inside some of these buildings. There were actually
    soldiers, dead now, who sat or stood, and listened.
    Holding on to what they could. Then they went out, and
    some died before they got back inside a
    garrison-church again. Clergymen, working for the
    army, stood up and talked to the men who were going to
    die about God, death, nothingness, redemption,
    salvation. It really happened. It was quite common.
                                        (GR 693)

>>> I interpret this passage as a poignant representation of the
>>> futility of war
>>> (and, more overtly, of the futility of religious faith), and of the
>>> enormous
>>> loss of lives during WWII specifically, rather than a criticism of
>>> either
>>> the doomed soldiers for holding to their faith before going into
>>> battle or
>>> even of the actions of the "army chaplains" doing the preaching.
>>> 

on 4/4/03 5:26 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:
 
> The tone I hear in the passage is one of sympathy and fellow feeling for
> those who face death in war. War itself is not on trial here.The time
> for questions as to the futility of war or the justice of war are in the
> past. We are viewing (reminiscing) the scene from a point at which war
> and all the atrocities that inevitably flow from war have long since
> become a given. The question now is surviving the war. Surviving it
> either in the sense of surviving it alive, or very possibly "surviving"
> it dead. Either is a difficult burden. Religion may ease this burden for
> some. A key phrase in the passage is "[h]olding on to what they could."

Yes, I agree. It's a matter of perspective. There's nothing that these
soldiers or army chaplains could do to halt the killing once the war was
under way, and thus they went off into battle in the certain knowledge that
many would not return. There was little more than faith in "redemption,
salvation" - however illusory - that they could hold on to in that moment.
It's a very poignant passage. Perhaps "hopelessness" would have been a
better word than "futility".

best