FW: The Rifles: An Excerpt

[jbor]

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From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:09:45 +1000
To: <teacher at inwind.it>
Subject: Re: The Rifles: An Excerpt

>> I'm not sure where in
>> the text you're getting the KKK stuff from, but the narrator says that
>> Lepton was one to "drive the African slaves as basely as a Creature of his
>> Sort might be expected to do" (416).

on 20/6/04 7:45 PM, umberto rossi at teacher at inwind.it wrote:

> Pynchon hints at the KKK in the Cape Town part of the novel, and
> wherever the Rifle appears. Not that there are them Ku Kluxers in the
> text; we're well before 1865. But many phrases, sentences, words
> foreshadow the KKK. The armed White Horsemen at Cape Town, for
> example; the Paxton Boys (proto-Kluxers in their own right, though
> their hate is aimed at another ethnic group), etc. Wherever the rifle
> appears the racial question is evoked.

It's not just the rifle's appearance which prompts the novel's emphasis on
racial prejudice and oppression. Slavery, imperialism, genocide -- these are
central focuses of the entire text.

Both historically and in the novel, the Paxton Boys' agenda is very
different from that of the KKK. I'd be quite interested to look at those
passages which you say allude to the KKK.

> As to your argument re. Lepton as the white man killed by Catfish,
> I'll have to reread the pages you mentioned.

My argument is that the identity of Catfish's victim is left indeterminate
by Pynchon, but that on the strength of what's in the text (and a process of
elimination) Lord Lepton is the most likely candidate. Your argument seems
to be that it is left ambiguous by Pynchon but that I'm wrong and it can't
possibly be Lord Lepton; you haven't yet said who it has to be instead,
however.

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