The Rifles: An Excerpt

[jbor]

There wasn't much consensus on the subject during the MDDM group read in
2002, and in the earlier group read when the topic came up no-one really
ventured an answer to the question. The scene is deliberately left
indeterminate by Pynchon, even though he also makes M&D very sure of the
identity of Catfish's victim.

As M&D never meet up with any of the Paxton boys, and as they had met Lord
Lepton, who profits from the production of weaponry and implements of
slavery, and who was "the owner" (681.5) of a rifle exactly like the one
described, I think it's more likely that it's Lord Lepton's scalp ("a long
Lock of fair European Hair" 681.8) than that of one of the Paxtons. Further,
there's nothing to connect Catfish with the slaughtered Susquehanna. The
weight of the evidence in the text and a process of elimination to me
suggested Lord Lepton as the most likely candidate.

Lepton tells M&D that "[t]here's coal out where you're going" (418), so it's
feasible that he has traveled there, and that he has been traveling there
again to scout for mining opportunities. It was never suggested that he had
left his wife and home and moved to Ohio. Being an Englishman and a
capitalist entrepreneur, and an arrogant and condescending fool to boot, it
is true that "[e]ven White People hated him" as Catfish announces (681.2);
Dixon does, for sure, and it's insinuated that so does Lady Lepton. That
Mason perceives Lepton as a "Monomaniack" might have something to do with
his rambling on obsessively about the "Great Chain of Being" back at Lepton
Castle. The point Mason is making (681.12-4) is that *after* having his
prized rifle stolen from him, he could imagine Lord Lepton being
monomaniacal in his desire to retrieve it and avenge its theft. It's Mason's
character analysis of the man.

The other thing which tinges the incident with dread for M&D is that it
illustrates the danger they are in, and is another forceful reminder of what
they are paving a way for in their work in America. On top of that, they
could as easily have stolen Lepton's rifle along with the Tub and the
electric eel.

best

on 15/6/04 4:39 PM, umberto rossi at teacher at inwind.it wrote:

> I feel I have to send the list a small piece of my paper in Malta
> because I repeatedly asked for your help about sundry matters, and
> since I have a different opinion about a matter that was discussed in
> list, I'd really like to share this with you. And discuss it--why
> not?
> 
> We're obviously talking about M&D and the scene in Ch. 70, when
> Catfish shows the Lancaster Rifle to the Surveyors.
> 
> We then learn that Catfish has killed and scalped the owner of the
> "sterloop" Rifle. But the novel does not tell who is he. The issue
> has been discussed on the Pynchon-L mailing list in summer 2002, and
> there was some consensus that the White man scalped by Catfish might
> be Lord Lepton, because he was the original owner of the rifle. But
> Pynchon does not overtly tell us that. Surely the "bad man" is
> someone either Mason or Dixon have met (this is how the matter is
> described in the novel: "Either Mason or Dixon might reply, "We've
> met,"-- yet neither does." 681.70). But there is not much in the
> Lepton Castle (or better, Plantation) episode (Ch. 41-42) which may
> explain why Lord Lepton, a ruined British aristocrat who settles in
> the American colonies and becomes a miner (he is also described as "a
> journeyman", 416.41) and then a successful entrepreneur in the steel
> industry, should leave his iron plantation and his wife and move to
> the then wild Ohio to be scalped and robbed of his rifle by the
> Delaware Chief.
> 
> It is true that Lepton, after squandering his fortune in Britain,
> became a "Nabob" (301.30) in America thanks to the production of
> "Iron in an hundred shapes" (411.41), and that those shapes are
> widely "used against living Bodies,-- cutting, chaining, penetrating
> sort of Activities" which are "a considerable Sector of the Iron
> Market (
) directed to offenses against Human, and of course Animal,
> flesh" (412.41); but the character Pynchon shows us does not resemble
> the "Monomaniack" expected by Mason (681.70) or the very bad White
> man Catfish has "wish'd to meet for a long time" (id.): Lepton, in
> his apparition in Ch. 41 is more a fop than a bloodthirsty
> frontiersman. A rich and frivolous Macaroni, not a Paxton Boy. Women
> seem to be much more attractive to Lord Lepton (who firmly believes
> that "Bodices are for ripping" 419.41) than solitary frontier
> adventures.