They

[Terrance]

Steve Maas wrote:
> 
> So anyhow, I've wondered off and on since the mid-70s, who or what are They,
> exactly?
> Steve Maas



  "The Jesuits taught me to examine things for second meanings
  and deeper connections...This implies they were thinking
  target all along." 

                                          Delillo, Underworld



  According to Pynchon  there is a drive within us to
  establish systems at the expense of differentiation. He has
  it, and we have it, and They have it. As a writer he wants
  to expand the reader's point of view. He writes  an
  encyclopedic satire elaborately designed but he subverts his
  own design. There is a sustained tension in Pynchon's texts.
  We might call it the "PoMo-Mo Agon." Modernist conventions
  and subversive Postmodernist techniques coexist without
  invalidating each other so that if the subversive PoMO
  really subverts, in the end it subverts the law of
  contradiction. One of the important elements of MS 
  Satire is Carnival. One function of the Carnival in GR is to
  cast-off what is according to Pynchon, a natural disposition
  of the Modern Western Mind: A is B &  A is not B
  cannot both be true. According to Pynchon, the drive to
  establish systems at the expense of the other(s) or
  differentiation, on the social level, and we can say, on the
  aesthetic level, leads to repressive technocratic society
  and an art that is only one tool of the repressive system. 

  The "Counterforce and the "System" also exist in conflict
  and nearly every relationship and every environment in GR
  obeys an S&M pattern.  "We define each other." Even the
  narrators play parts in the S&M drama, both with an imagined
  reader (see naratee and the 2nd person McHale stuff), the
  characters, each other, the author, and the reader.
  Sometimes they are dominant and sometimes they play victim
  to the naratee or another narrator or character, or even
  their own stories. .  Some of the narrators work for Them,
  are henchmen or masters in the "system" and they will quite
  frequently address an imagined reader, mislead him (I think
  he is male?) or tell him lies or tell tall tales, or tell
  ridiculous paranoid parodies, or give bad advise, or insult,
  or mock the reader's "bookish" reflexes and natural
  proclivity for patterns and systems and, well,  "cause and
  effect." Diversity is reduced to Binarity. 

  "Ideas of the opposite"
pleasure from pain, light from dark,
  dominance from submission
life from death and guilt from
  innocense
GR.48

  We also have, in addition to the "YOU" that is addressed in
  GR, the "WE" that is addresses, and this "We-Address" often
  makes the naratee and the narrators accomplices or
  supporters of the Masters or Henchmen or System or a
  defender of a character that has been a victim at some point
  but is now a victimizer.



  THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION

              What is the Law of Contradiction?

           Law of Contradiction and Law of Knowledge

               "Now the best established of all principles
               may be stated as follows: The same attribute
               cannot at the same time belong and not
               belong to the same subject in the same
               respect ... This I repeat, is the most certain
               of all principles..." (Aristotle in Metaphysics). 
               "There is a principle in existing things about
               which we cannot make a mistake; of which,
               on the contrary, we must always realize the
               truth -- that the same thing cannot at one and
               the same time be and not be, nor admit of
               any other similar pair of opposites..."

                   --Aristotle,  Metaphysics


               "The most certain principle of all is that
               regarding which it is impossible to be
               mistaken; for such a principle must be both
               the best known ... and non-hypothetical. For
               a principle which every one must have who
               understands anything that is, is not a
               hypothesis; and that which every one must
               know who knows anything ... Evidently then
               such a principle is the most certain of all ...
               It is, that the same attribute cannot at the
               same time belong and not belong to the
               same subject and in the same respect."

			--Aristotle in Metaphysics

           Aristotle is reported to have written this in his
           Metaphysics. Aristotle further said that "everyone
           in argument relies upon this ultimate law, on which
           all others rest." He said this principle or law of
           logic "must be known if one is to know anything at all."
           He also said, "if everything is and at the same
           time is not, all opinions must be true."


  RATIONALIZATION OR ROUTINIZATION AND THE CHARISMATIC HERO

  The world of modernity, Weber stressed over and over again,
  has been deserted by  the gods. Man has chased them away and has
rationalized and
  made calculable and predictable what in an earlier age had seemed
governed by
  chance, but also by  feeling, passion, and commitment, by personal
appeal and
  personal fealty, by grace  and by the ethics of charismatic heroes.

  Weber attempted to document this development in a variety of
  institutional areas.  His studies in the sociology of religion were
meant to trace
  the complicated and  tortuous ways in which the gradual
"rationalization of
  religious life" had led to the  displacement of magical procedure by
wertrational
  systematizations of man's  relation to the divine. He attempted to
show how prophets
  with their charismatic  appeals had undermined priestly powers based
on tradition;
  how with the emergence  of "book religion" the final systematization
and
  rationalization of the religious sphere  had set in, which found its
culmination in the Protestant  Ethic.

  Eco-They: Kartell, Firm, Syndicate, Management, 
  Political-They: Empire, Corporate state, Ruling Elite-the
  degenerate aristocracy.   Allusions and Personifications: The Elect,
The Studio, the
  octopus, adenoid, Dracula. 

  THE ECONOMIC THEY

  Soldiers stand every few yards, a loose cardon, unmoving, a
  bit supernatural. The Battle of Britain was hardly so
  formal. But these new robot bombs bring with them chances
  for public terror no one has sounded. Jessica notes a
  coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited
  civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.
        
   "Who're they?"
        
   He shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot."
  [GR.40]

  Does GR pin down or name an unequivocal source for the evil
  it portrays? Who are THEY? 

  "From overhead, from a German camera-angle, it occurs to
  Webley Silvernail, this lab here is also a maze, I'n't it
  now
behaviorists run these aisles of tables and consoles
  just like rats 'n' mice
.But who watches from above, who
  notes their responses?" 
  This terrible description, dark and grim is subverted by a
  sill song-PAVLOVIA. [GR.229]


  There is a universal conspiracy in GR. They appear under
  every imaginable manifestation of power. Ultimately, all of
  these are subordinated to the "the needs of technology
 a
  conspiracy between human beings and techniques
these needs
  are understood only by the Political They or the "ruling
  elite." 


  THE ECONOMIC: The Kartel, The Syndicate, The Firm, The
  Management

  In economic terms, They are "the growing organic Kartel",
  the "IG" that Smarargd says is "ours" but which Herr
  Rathenau, from the expanded, though not perfect view from
  the "other side" says is "only another illusion." 

  Rathenau seems to know more about who They are, but he can't
  tell. He can only tell what the questions are: "You must ask
  two questions. First, what is the real nature of synthesis?
  And then: what is the real nature of control?" [GR.166-167]

  Pointsman, the profane Pavlovian Knight, knows that the
  "agents of the Syndicate
 wait in the central chamber" of
  the labyrinth, that "its only a job they have
." And to fund
  his project and keep Mexico, he will do a job on Pudding and
  R&J.  

  Funding the War and the Laboratory is expensive. Men and
  women can be very valuable assets to The Firm When the
  Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit argues that the MMPI only
  "tests for whether a man will be a good or bad soldier," and
  not any "human values," Pointsman, a Utilitarian, replies, 
  "Soldiers are much in demand these days, Reverened Doctor."
  [GR.81]

  Of course,  The Firm is particularly interested in any
  soldiers that possess special talents or "gifts." Brian
  McHale says the opening dream scene of GR is a "paradigm of
  problematic passages throughout Gravity's Rainbow: the
  reader, invited to reconstruct a 'real' scene or action in
  the novel's fictive world, is forced in retrospect -
  sometimes in long retrospect - to 'cancel' the
  reconstruction he or she has made, and to relocate it within
  a character's dream, hallucination, or fantasy." And, more
  important to our current concerns, Pirate's gift for
  "getting inside the fantasies of others
is a gift the Firm
  has finds uncommonly useful."  The Firm's or Their control
  over the narrative is another subject, but for now we can
  see that They control the funding with the War, and that
  although Pirate saves Europe from the Balkan Armageddon, the
  Firm only allows him "tiny homeopathic doses of peace" and
  he does not save Europe from World War II. The Firm uses men
  or women to get what They want. Roger Mexico (Weber / Mill)
  knows that the War is his mother and that the business of
  the War "is buying and selling."