Nalline's Gold Star

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Mike Bailey:

>Also, I was wondering while thinking about GR today was about Nalline 
>Slothrop's gold star.  Isn't a >gold star mother somebody who has lost a 
>child to war?  In that case, could it be that Slothrop at >some point - 
>maybe even as early as London - has actually lost his life and is 
>continuing his >adventures as a ghost?

Hmm, an intriguing theory. I tend, however, to read that passage as 
Slothrop's fever-induced hallucinations. Slothrop's been "asshole enough to 
drink out of an ornamental pond in the Tiergarten" (359) and has predictably 
enough taken sick. As he lies in an empty cellar, feverish, vomiting, and 
"oozing shit that burns like acid" (360) - literally in deep shit - he 
wonders whether he'll ever get home:

"Wondering if he'll ever see Berkshire again. Mommy, Mommy! The War's over, 
why can't I go home now? Nalline, the reflection from her Gold Star 
brightening her chins like a buttercup, smirks by the window and won't 
answer...." (360)

In his miserable state, he longs to go home, but he's also afraid of dying, 
and he's afraid that his mother - not exactly a paragon of maternal warmth - 
would rather have a Gold Star to show to her friends than the return of her 
son: hence his hallucination (and in the very next paragraph, we learn that 
the fever DOES cause hallucinations: "A terrible time. Hallucinating Rolls 
Royces and bootheels [etc.]).

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