GR: screaming

[jbor at bigpond.com]

I agree with you, because it ties in with so many other things 
structurally and thematically, though there are some anomalies, and the 
possibility that the "screaming" is an all clear signal (or an air raid 
warning siren) is a valid one, and it does give meaning to the comment 
that it's "all theatre" as Erik points out. If it's a V-2 (an A-4 as 
Teddy Bloat confirms on p. 8), then the sound of it comes after the 
rocket strike, so the "screaming" which Pirate hears while he's asleep 
(if it is a sound from outside his dream, or as well as in it) can't be 
the sound of the doodle he sees in the sky (the "incoming mail") when 
he's up on the roof. Plus, that rocket seems to fall in the east, "over 
the North Sea" (p. 6) several minutes after Pirate wakes up. On the 
other hand, both Slothrop and Pirate arrive at the rocket site "out at 
zero longitude" (p.  20 -- a nice touch), somewhere near Greenwich I 
guess. Is that far enough east from Chelsea to make it look like the 
rocket has fallen into the North Sea? Clearly, there's only one rocket 
that morning.

I assume that the air raid sirens still went off in London during the 
German V-2 attacks in 1944-5. It must have been quite unlike the Blitz 
of 1940-1 ("it has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it 
to now" ?), in that when the air raid sirens went off back then there 
was still time to take cover because the Luftwaffe raids hadn't 
happened yet. But even though the sound comes after the V-2 strike, it 
was picked up on radar beforehand, wasn't it? And that would have 
activated the air raid siren. But maybe it was just a matter of a few 
seconds or less, so that it really was "too late" when the sirens went 
off. How long, comparatively, did the V-2s take to hit their mark, as 
opposed to the old buzzbombs? (Slothrop gives a pretty good description 
of both on p. 21 and p. 25 btw.) And surely an air raid warning siren 
was different to an all clear alert?

So I'm not going to dismiss the idea that it's an all-clear alert out 
of hand -- I think a siren would sound like it was coming "across the 
sky" when heard from a stationary position -- but it would be good to 
clarify the timing, and the sorts of sirens that were in use at the 
time and what they sounded like. And why not a warning siren rather 
than an all-clear?

It's worth entertaining possibilities, different opinions, even if you 
ultimately reject them -- that's the value of a group discussion. While 
I still don't read "the Evacuation" as referring to or evoking a bowel 
movement even after someone has made that connection, at least Erik was 
on the way to working up a worthwhile thesis from that possibility. 
Offering up the idea that Pynchon wrote the word "evacuation", 
remembered that it is a word also used to refer to defecation, chuckled 
to himself and then moved on makes him sound like Benny Hill. In fact, 
it isn't even saying anything about the meaning of the text -- what 
it's suggesting is that the connotation of the word is a coincidental 
one (which it is in my opinion).

best

On 29/10/2005 Ghetta Life wrote:

> I still think it's a rocket.  Sirens don't move across the sky.  And 
> you could hear a rocket after it's passed over you.
>
> Ghetta
>
>> From: "Erik T. Burns" <erik.burns at dowjones.com>
>>
>> foax:
>>
>> about the screaming that comes across the sky in the first line: i 
>> had always assumed this was the sound of a rocket, but something 
>> someone said here in the last couple of days made it out to be an 
>> all-clear siren instead. that was the first time i'd thought of that, 
>> and it makes eminent>sense: that's why The Evacuation, while it still 
>> proceeds, is all theatre.
>> The all clear comes too late to stop them evacuating.
>>
>> obvious, perhaps (it sure looks obvious to me now) but I warrant most 
>> people just think that screaming is a rocket.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>