Pynchon as propaganda

[Keith McMullen]

>>>As I've already shown, both the tone and the semantic content of the
passage
do rely on the opposition of Christian faith in life after and death and a
view of death as final and irrevocable.<<<

This is simply not in the passage. Nowhere does the passage indicate that
death is final and irrevocable. It states an obvious fact, that the soldiers
are dying and facing death. This is not an advocation of atheism. Both
theists and atheists acknowledge that soldiers die.

>>>The chaplains tell the soldiers a myth about redemption and salvation.
But the soldiers just die. That's the
purport of the passage.<<<

No way. That the soldiers die, yes, but that they 'just' die is your
addition to the text.

> People of faith do die. The text is silent
> on what happened to them afterwards.

>>>Precisely. It does not endorse the Christian schema which is proposed
right
there in the very same paragraph.<<<

Neither does it endorse atheism. You are projecting that onto the text. I
acknowledge that it does not endorse either perspective. It is silent. It is
fair to assume that the chaplains are endorsing a life after death scenario,
but invalid to suggest the narrator endorses atheism. There is simply no
statement to that effect in the text.

>>> text is silent on the motivations of the chaplains, just as it is silent
on whether or not the soldiers are Christians. As I said before, I fully
realise that even suggesting that atheism might be a driving force within
Pynchon's texts is tantamount to treason here, and not open for civil
discussion.<<<

I have no problem with the possibility of atheism being a driving force in
Pynchon's texts. There is simply no evidence of such in the passage. The
statement that soldiers have died and are going to die is neither theistic
nor atheistic. It is neutral fact.

>>>possibility that a "God" or gods don't exist is consistently
excluded, both in general discussion and in discussing Pynchon's texts
specifically.<<<

This has nothing to do with the passage we are discussing. Your view
regarding this section of GR is not supportable by the text. These
generalizations about general discussions of the texts has no bearing on the
specifics of this passage.