The Burial of the Dead

[alice wellintown]

Carvill wrote,

d) then there's the detail on the numerous churches in Jeshimon,
apparently none of them socially activist,
and having no effect on the surrounding miasma...while this certainly
fits with the militaristic Right's courting of the religious Right, it
also
fits in with churchly impotence against injustice thru the centuries -
or perhaps is meant as a sidelong commentary on such...


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


 Webb, we recall, is from the Quaker State. His family fights on both
sides of the Mason Dixon Line in the War of the States.

When still a lad and before the Civil War, which has consumed a good
portion of his childhood, ends, the Traverse Family splits up, some
head West, Ohio, then out into the Western territories, the Rockies,
other Traverse head to Mexico. The narrator reminds us that Mexico and
these other Lands are the "same thing." Atd.97

Webb makes the long journey (10 years or so) West. He has his first
little love interest along the way, young Teresa (his "hyacinth
girl”).
His folks die. Young Webb has a Confederate gun he inherited from his
uncle.  Webb has to tough it out.

Has a full house 3 boys, two ladies, work, work, work round the clock
(the loss of sleep is an important trope in the novel).

Webb gets religion.
Why can't he just be satisfied with work and die? Why does he need,
need, need, like a fix, that nitro opium union radical anarchist Fix?
His life seems to add up to it. He needs something more than work and
die. He needs sleep. He needs rest. He needs some time to develop his
humanity; to form his identity; to connect with something that ain't
working for bosses and the family.
He has a couple-few awakenings; those exploding pool balls and the
Rev's sermons and his battles against the guards, his solidarity with
his international brothers in arms.

Webb wants the Magic, the alchemy,  the Catholic belief in the
forgiveness of sin here in this world, now. He wants a connection from
sin to penance and redemption.
But the magic of the Church, the great connection of variables, has
been lost. There are more churches you can count. Shake a stick and
another one will appear, like magic. But the White Man has no Magic.
The Indians look on, astounded that the Whites would treat other
Whites as they treat Indians; as if they have forgotten the Magic that
Unites them all and are all searching for a new Magic, the centre, the
ALL, but this Gnostic drive, like the Herero's Rocket Launch, will
only divide them, each a vector, its distance as finite as Webb's life
and heading in as many directions as there are Men. The Spirit of
Capitalism could not abide a Mexico. Men must be made to Work, not for
Redemption or Salvation, for the Powerful Magic that is Penance must
not be allowed to give men solace and rest, but always must he be made
to believe that he will be saved or not because it is his Destiny.