ATDTDA (3): Children and dynamite, 90-96

[Mark Kohut]

Is this attempt to find a "general rule", Pynchon's way of asking if/when dynamiting might be 'justified"?......Or, to be more exact, when Kit and Frank think it might be, as heirs to their father's deeds? 

Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:  The children are introduced to bombing, "brought ... into it one by one,
each taking to it different"; and here, for the first time, is a reference
to Kit. Frank wants to find the "general rule to any of it", anxious to
master the laws of dynamiting; whereas Kit thinks he already has discovered
a "general rule". Reef and Lake, who refuses to conform to gender
stereotyping, are somewhat more introspective (90-91).

One is reminded of the Chums. At the outset, this group of
characters--easily confused if not written carefully--were differentiated
one from the other in terms of their status aboard the Inconvenience and
their attitudes to authority. Here, the children follow the example of their
father, presumably less affected by their mother's objections (eg, 95).
Dynamite, then, has the power to blast open the family. Conversely, it also
keeps the family together: when Webb wonders if he "wouldn't be better off
without all these family obligations", Moss Gatlin tells him the best
disguise is that of a family man. Nonetheless, the owners' detectives soon
establish "a pattern" (or "general rule").

At the bottom of 92 we are reminded that the children function as witnesses
here: the first reference to education comes when Webb tells them what they
"won't hear ... in school" (93). Frank's quest for an overview means he
wants to "get licensed as an engineer, able to call at least a few more of
his own shots". Reef wishes to be "his father's apprentice and sidekick"
(94); however, if Frank moves away from his father, it is Webb who keeps
Reef at a distance. Frank better appreciates the way things are; but Reef
focuses on his father and personalises the politics. He rejects the "amiable
pose of working-stiff family man" in order to see "the anger behind it"
(93). And then, "always, Reef noted, that part withheld that you felt you
couldn't get to" (94). Eventually, shot-reverse shot, Webb "gaze[s] at Reef
in almost unconcealed envy ..." etc (95).

The section ends with Webb resigned to "growing into a stranger to those
kids" (95); so he is back where he started, losing Teresa because of "that
silence that had stretched on between them until there was no point anymore"
(88).





 
---------------------------------
Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. Check it out.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070304/b91fbb1a/attachment.html>