GR | Spoiler | Bilicero @ The Heath...

[Scott Badger]

More like Quixote in reverse; Thanatz seeing windmills where monsters stand.

And why did Cervantes use windmills?

Scott


>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.
>>
> 
>