Gravity's Rainbow Group Read (GRGR05)--One More Time-LONG, pt.1

[Tim Strzechowski]

I don't think you're full of shit at all, Meg.  In fact, the "some" referred 
to at the beginning of the paragraph -- the evacuees exiting the caravan 
from the previous paragraph, I assume -- are experiencing an imagined death, 
"hearing a voice" speaking to him/her the quotation that concludes the 
paragraph. Is this supposed to be the voice of one's God, a voice suggesting 
to each evacuee the cynical possibility that salvation isn't coming after 
all (and if so, I wonder if this notion then makes the word "lie" a pun in 
the following paragraph)?

Regardless, tying together nicely in this passage are the notions of 
damnation and salvation with the light and dark imagery of Pirate's 
nightmare, which has a Dantean quality to it: the "several levels" of the 
carriage, the fact that "it is poorer the deeper they go," the faces of the 
evacuees (many of which aren't visible), even the movement of the evacuees 
as they "move slowly" and "without resistance," a slow procession of 
evacuees that contains echoes of Dante's sinners (and adding to the 
parallels in this passage between the evacuation and Dante's _Inferno_ are 
the numerous references to sensory impressions: the "the smell [...] of old 
wood," the "crunches" of dirt underfoot, the "voice," the "screaming," etc).

And keep in mind one important line from this passage: "It is a judgment 
from which there is no appeal" (p. 4).  Is this line significant to you post 
concerning the Elect, the Preterate, and the Reprobate?

Tim


Meg said:

[...]


> This passage indicates that one of the (major) motifs in the novel is 
> preterition, which Louis Mackey says is tied to the motif of paranoia, 
> which he argues, that in GR, "is manifestly a religious attitude . . . 
> [p]aranoia is described at one point as a 'Puritan reflex . . . seeking 
> other orders behind the visible' ("Paranoia, Pynchon, and Preterition." 
> _Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"_, Harold Bloom, ed. 1986).  Further, 
> Mackey argues that this is a tenet of New England Calvinism, the core of 
> which is the "doctrine of predestination.  God . . . has from all eternity 
> relentlessly elected to save a few out of the corrupt mass of fallen 
> humanity.  The rest he passes over and allows to fall into hell borne down 
> by the weigh of Adam's and their own sin.  All men are either Elect, the 
> handful chosen for salvation, or Preterite, passed over and tacitly 
> consigned to damnation" (Bloom, pp54-5).
>
> One other point that Mackey makes is that not only are the preterite 
> passed over for salvation but that this division between Elect and 
> Preterite can be further refined to include the Reprobate, "whom God 
> designates for damnation . . . damned because they were always meant to be 
> damned, and the preterite who are damned because they were never meant to 
> be saved" (Bloom, 56).
>
> So what does this mean for the book?  What do we make of this?  Is 
> Slothrop merely preterite, or more sharply, a reprobate?  A-and does it 
> matter?  As we go farther into the novel, and we learn more about 
> Slothrop, we can see how deeply tied to his being is his religious 
> upbringing.  What implications does this bring to his work at ACHTUNG, if 
> any?  Or am I just full of shit???
>

[...]