The Disgusting English Candy Drill

[Dave Monroe]

The Disgusting English Candy Drill (GR, Pt. I, pp. 114-20)

http://www.olemichaelsen.dk/gravity.html

>From a correspondent ...

   Slothrop's suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous wine
jellies and candies in that early section of Gravity's Rainbow seems
to have a weightier meaning than previously noticed, involving many of
the threads that center around Slothrop.  Indeed, it may a kind of
lynchpin for the novel on a few major levels.
   Slothrop's suffering is a metaphor, or perhaps a prefiguring, for
what no-one (in the novel) knew for sure at the time: Millions of
people (Polish, Jewish, Gypsy people, Christian German  homosexuals,
German Communists, aged and infirm Germans, as well as aged and infirm
Christians from the conquered nations) were being rounded up and
forced, en masse, into gas chambers where millions perished.  It is a
very deft treatment of what it might have been like to inhale those
truly lethal toxic fumes, done under the cover of Pynchon's
"Disgusting English Candy Drill," where Slothrop inhales merely mock
toxic fumes generated by the "all-but witch's" candies.
   To let us on to his intent he uses the word "holocaust" once,
though not in the sense that it has come to be used since WWII, "his
tongue's a hopeless holocaust."  This word, with some other buzzers,
like "horrible alkaloid desolation" (the pouring of lye on the
cadavers), and "pure nitric acid" (one of the poisons the breathing of
whose fumes was truly lethal) are sprinkled around this episode.  It
seems Pynchon wants us to carry the notions of the historical
Holocaust, a disgust at how the people were killed, and how their
corpses were disposed of, while we enjoy a tension-filled chuckle over
the series of disgusting candies Slothrop eats and their various
effects on him.
   To further clarify his method, he actually describes the candies
with their shapes being those of "hand grenades," ... "a .455 Webley
cartridge," ... "a six-ton earthquake bomb," and a "licorice bazooka,"
all instruments of murder.  He couldn't have been more explicit,
failing to shape a candy guillotine.  The candies are all metaphors
for political murder.
   Mrs. Quoad has something to do with Slothrop's memories.  "I'm the
only one with a memory around here," Mrs. Qoad sighs.  "We help each
other, you see."  Slothrop thinks, "but this room has gone on
clarifying: part of whoever he was inside it has kindly remained."
She is a self-described "all but outright witch," and she will tempt
Slothrop with candies, as might a witch in Grimm's fairy tales.
   His girl of the moment is Darlene (her name from the same root as
Darling, or Beloved) and Slothrop's mother's name is Nalline, a
somewhat sound-alike to Darlene.  Except Nalline is a morphine-like
compound.  There seems to be a lot of health and death talk among
them, and we are reminded from the start (as they each shed a tear at
realizing they have survived to have yet another tryst), that death is
everywhere around.
   After Slothrop's confectionery-torture at the hands of the
mischievous Mrs. Quoad, "His head floats in a halo of (menthol) ice."
And, "Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in
the air."  At the metaphorical level, Slothrop (as we've known him)
has died, killed by candies resembling weapons, emitting "poison and
debilitating gases found in training manuals."  Slothrop's
disintegration begins from this point.  It is now he begins his haloed
and ghostly ascent to heaven.
   The disintegration of the hero is a characteristic of one of the
types of dramas set out in Northrop Frye's discussion of various
genres, the Menippean Satire as you might have suspected.  So there
are many threads combining in this section, itself being quite as
dense as any similar section in the novel.  Pynchon alludes to the
German "War Against The Jews," to Norman O. Brown, and Northrop Frye,
as well as the Holocaust rememberers, without ever saying, "Slothrop
dies now, and is resurrected, and begins on his Norman O. Brown path,
in the genre-style suggested by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of
Criticism."  Anyway, that's what seems to be going on.
   And just for the hell of it, he has Mrs. Quoad (or some other
sinister figure) peeking through a window (or glass door) at Slothrop
and Darlene, while they are making love.  Slothrop spots this Peeping
Tom and can't quite make up his mind if it is a little-old-lady
voyeur, or an intelligence type operative who is assigned to keep him
under surveillance.  If he can't make up his mind, is this a variation
on Oedipa's never knowing if she knew or knew not?  Which leaves us to
wonder if we got it, or not, whatever it was.
   And the section ends as a rocket falls, which sexually arouses
Slothrop, and the two lovers make the best of a bad situation and go
at each other again....