VLVL2(3): Hector's fall

[jbor]

on 18/8/03 1:09 PM, Tim Strzechowski wrote:

> In the "Who was saved?" passage, Hector is establishing a contrast between
> "you sixties people" who he describes as "children" waiting for that "magic
> payoff" through revolution and Iron Butterfly, and what Zoyd terms the
> "fascist regimes" of which Hector is a part.  Hector's suggestion in this
> passage is that, for all the freedom and love and equality and spirituality
> that was promoted by the sixties counterculture, it ultimately came to
> naught.

Even more literally, Hector lists the fate of Zoyd's housemates at Gordita:
"one OD'd"; one was killed (I assume) in a parking lot dispute; another was
killed in a contract hit overseas ("took a tumble in a faraway land"); and
there are "more'n half of 'em currently on the run" (29.4). To Hector, these
are examples of guys and gals who were *not* "saved", who have "fallen"
(literally) or lost out in life as a direct result of "all that shit" which
the 60s counter-culture ideologues preached. And in the sense that those
such as Van Meter and so many other of Zoyd's buddies turned and became paid
informants (and Zoyd's own "innocence" or state of grace in this respect is
very much a moot point, as Hector notes at 28.29-32), and thereby betrayed
the anti-State ideals of their hippie credo, they are indeed "fallen"
(metaphorically-speaking).

Conversely, Hector is "saved", according to Zoyd's moral schema, because
over the years he chose to defy "the State" and launch out on all these
maverick schemes in order to feather his own nest. Of course, Hector regards
this not as his salvation but as his "fall", a conscious betrayal of his
commission as a federal agent.

The cases for and against are somewhat exaggerated because we get a lot of
the data via the characters' povs, and Zoyd and Hector spend much of their
time baiting one another and throwing loaded terms about. On which side of
the balance sheet the narrative agency (or Pynchon) stands is debatable, and
I think it has been set up pretty evenly -- deliberately so, I'd suggest, in
order that the reader is forced into an awareness of his or her own act of
interpretation in attempting to distinguish "good" from "bad". And, of
course, it's partly or even primarily a comic-ironic situation and
relationship which Pynchon has constructed as well.

The "tragic" aspect of Zoyd's predicament is that he refuses to acknowledge
the fact, a fact obvious to everyone else, that he "works" for the
government and has thus betrayed the ideals he once (more or less) believed
in. Hector's more conscious of having "fallen", but it has been a deliberate
choice ("concentrated and graceful"), and it is a set of ideals which are
diametrically opposed to Zoyd's which he has betrayed. They have slid along
their respective moral continuums to the point where they have become very
similar to one another in many respects, and this, then, is perhaps why they
each perceive in the other something of a kindred spirit.

best


> Returning to the question of Tragedy, one who is a tragic figure in the
> classical sense must possess an unswerving belief that his perception of
> reality is correct despite all the signals or prophecies or whatever.  In
> essence, Tragic Man feels he is beyond the hands of fate, and will
> nonetheless succeed in his actions.  Based on the aforementioned section
> (28) and the "feeling sorry for himself" passage (29), Hector's conviction
> that how he has led his life may have led to numerous detriments (e.g.
> diminished skills, lost professionalism, self-hatred, etc.), but has in fact
> *not* lessened his belief that what he is doing is correct (morally?), adds
> to his tragic circumstances and the sense that he is "fallen" as well as
> "saved."
> 
> In fact, when we think about it, don't *most* tragic figures think of
> themselves as both, in a way?  Lear says that he's "more sinn'd against than
> sinning."  Don't most tragic figures view themselves as acknowledging their
> sinfulness, but somehow above retribution and worthy of being "saved"?  Does
> this combination of viewing himself as "fallen," yet permitting Zoyd to call
> him "saved," push him closer to the realm of tragic?
>