MMV: Windigo

[jbor]

on 21/8/04 4:41 AM, Ghetta Life wrote:

> And the use 
> of this "cannibal" to exact this judgment is almost racist. At the very
> least it is an overwrought contrivance.

Indeed. To designate "the Windigo", which is a Native American spiritual
belief, as "a moral failure", is very much a type of religious
discrimination. (Note how the exalted state is labelled by the Western
anthropologist as a "psychosis", where within Western mythologies such
divine visions would be called "miracles".) Throughout the story Pynchon
identifies "the Windigo psychosis" with the Christian Eucharist, and that is
the spanner in the works which King has chosen to ignore.

best