GR | Spoiler | Bilicero @ The Heath...

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I see what Tore means by calling Blicero's quest quixotic, but the 
association between Blicero and Quixote does not work for me.

The swastika, yes, definitely, and the giant wheel in the sky from the 
highly relevant passage Paul thankfully pointed us to. This is 
archetypal imagery: A cross within a circle, especially if that circle 
is spinning through the sky, is in some way or other related to the sun, 
of which the swastika of course is a symbol. The eye and the sun are 
also symbolically related to each other.

The combination of the cross and the circle seems to be GR's counterpart 
to the letter/shape V. in "V." and the Tristero in COL49. It is 
certainly an overdetermined image, for the reader as well as for 
Slothrop: On page 624 of the Picador edition, shortly after we have 
learned about van der Groov's windmill dream via Pirate Prentice, 
Slothrop scratches a grafitto (the sign that says "Rocketman was here") 
depicting the V2 from above. Slothrop then thinks of other "fourfold 
expressions - variations on Frans van der Groov's cosmic windmill", 
including the swastika. On page 625, shortly before he becomes a 
crossroad himself, it says "Crosses, swastikas, Zone-mandalas, how can 
they not speak to Slothrop?"

We should also remember that Frans experiences the "purest form of 
European adventure" (111) while obsessively aiming at and killing 
Dodoes. The haakbus did probably not yet have crosshairs, and Pynchon 
does not mention any, but the imagery certainly suggests a connection 
between Frans' genocidal obsession with shooting Dodoes and the 
"reticule of tree-branches" of the original quote.

And then, of course, there is the wind that drives the mills....

Thomas


> 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.
>