GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 08:50, jbor wrote:
> 
> >> Sure. Christian chaplains, "working for the army", preaching about salvation
> >> and redemption and sending soldiers out to their deaths. It's grotesque.
>  
> on 19/4/03 9:55 PM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:
> 
> > We need another reality check here.
> > 
> > I think we can assume in our reading that Pynchon is not stupid, knows
> > it's the generals who send the men out to their deaths, not the
> > chaplains or belief in redemption and salvation.
> 
> Generals? In the passage? The telling detail is that Pynchon has these "army
> chaplains" preaching to the soldiers *before* they go off into battle.

But so what? The reader can't possibly assume the men would just get up
from the church service and march off to combat if they hadn't been
ordered to do so by their commanders?  The reader doesn't divorce his
interpretation from the common sense he has about how things operate in
the world. We're not from another planet.

Why do you seem to be granting to chaplains powers they don't have,
powers the army has not given them? Powers the Almighty has not given
them?

 Not
> ministering to the sick and wounded, performing last rites, delivering
> eulogies.

Huh? The men aren't dead or wounded yet. 


 Sending them off to their deaths with promises of redemption and
> salvation. "It really happened." (693.14)

"Sending them off to their deaths" is not a paraphrase of anything in
the text. 

This has gone on for days. I apologize to p-listers for not dropping the
subject.
.

P..