GR | Spoiler | Bilicero @ The Heath...

[Bryan Snyder]

The first thing I thought of was the mandala... with of course the Holy
Center being the empty circle which would be made up from the pupil?

the windmill dividing the eye into four areas, the pupil being the Holy
Center, which I think to be a main part of Pynchon's writing, esp w/ GR.
The center of the story is missing, the center of all the plots the
paranoids suspect is missing... the imagery of the mandala extends beyond
the Hereo village, the control switch of the V-2 and several other
references.... to the book itself (life=south, death=north, vision=east and
entropy/decay/logic=west (the American west) as well as the idea that the
CORE of all his plots is just simply absent... or maybe better put... like
supernatural phenomena - just simply hidden to the naked eye (the reader)...
one can catch a glimpse of it (like Comfortably Numb's "when i was a child i
caught a fleeting glimpse... out of the corner of my eye") and people often
will, but will ignore it, move on to societal/materialistic needs of
logic...

I see the parts that are all missing from TPs works, the parts that would
satisfy readers concerned solely with plot, are all like infrared waves, or
a dog's whistle... you can't see or hear it... but it does exist... just
outside the spectrum that humans can interact with on their own (i.e.
without IR Goggles or super microphones... etc.).  And i think the allegory
works so perfectly.

sorry about the diversion... lol...

I thought about this thread a lot over the weekend and i think its an image
of the mandala...


BUT HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY BUGGING ME:

Why does the windmill only present in the reflection?  Wouldn't the same
image symbolism come across had the windmill existed?  He made it this way
for a reason... and i think we are glossing over the fact that the Windmill
is not present on the Heath.

With that said - i think everyone's ideas as to what the IMAGE means are
very insightful.

B

On 3/5/07, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think Thomas has it about right (but should also include Quixote).
> The spinning cross is also a swastika.  Also a Yin/Yang symbol.
>
> Thomas' "and a circle" should, besides the spinning nature of this
> cross also include the "image" of the eye.  This is not an eye, but an
> "image of" one, and as such is a circle itself being seen by another.
>
> I love GR.  Its depth of imagery is amazing.
>
> David Morris
>
> On 3/2/07, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> > Dave Monroe schrieb:
> >
> > >"An image keeps recurring--a muddy brown almost black eyeball
> reflecting a windmill and a jagged reticule of tree--branches in silhouette
> ..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 670)
> > >
> > Crosses and targets. And a circle.
>
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