Ethical Diversions

[Ghetta Life]

Polker's complicity with the death system really is the clincher, as you 
say.  Especially so when one remembers that his own wife and daughter were 
pawns moved around the board for his ammusement until the very end, even 
after he knew that the real ones were long gone...

Ghetta

>From: jbor at bigpond.com
>
>I think it's safe to assume that every reader of GR will know about the 
>Holocaust. What is striking, though, is its absence from Pynchon's 
>narrative. But once you recognise that, at the time the novel is set, 
>virtually noone knew what was happening in those camps, Pynchon's rationale 
>for this becomes clear.
>
>For those at the time who did know something about the death camps, or 
>those who might have known, like Pirate (the telepath), like Katje (the 
>double or triple agent), and like Blicero (the SS officer), it was a 
>prospect so terrible that they tried to suppress it in their minds, to the 
>point where it only leaks through in dreams or neurosis.
>
>The few direct references we get (105, 666, 681), oblique though they are, 
>are likewise fully consistent with how events played out at the time. And 
>Pokler's obliviousness, until that moment when he walks through the gates 
>of the Dora work camp at war's end (432-3), is the clincher.
>

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