GR 'Streets' (death and/or afterlife)

[jbor]

>> The telling detail is that Pynchon has these "army
>> chaplains" preaching to the soldiers *before* they go off into battle.

on 19/4/03 11:47 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:

> 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?

No, but that's not what I said. I've been talking about the way the passage
has been written. It could have been written in other ways, with generals
and orders and whatnot, or with burials or baptisms, but it wasn't.

> 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?

Wha? The chaplains are "working for the army". They preach, and then they
send the soldiers off to battle. God speed and all that. Who said anything
about the chaplains giving the orders? Seems a bit of a straw man,
particularly if you didn't want to prolong the topic.

>> Not
>> ministering to the sick and wounded, performing last rites, delivering
>> eulogies.
> 
> Huh? The men aren't dead or wounded yet.

They are "dead now" (693.9), as well as "going to die" (693.13). Common
sense also dictates that the chaplains would be doing all these other
things, and that Pynchon had the opportunity to describe the scene however
he wanted to. He chose to depict the chaplains preaching to the soldiers
before they went off and were killed in battle.

>> 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. 

Yes, it is. The soldiers "went out". The chaplains didn't. "Off you go,
boys. God speed." Sentiments to that effect. And then "some died before they
got back inside a garrison-church again."

best