Zoyd [IV spoiler]

[alice wellintown]

>        "What, I should only trust good people? man, good people get
>        bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil
>        once in a while, it makes no more or less sense. I mean, I
>        wouldn't give odds either way."
>        IV, 349
>
> Now, if you're cynical, pagan or simply simultaneously aware of and
> irritated by the New Testament [and maybe even if you're not irritated]
> you'll appreciate how well Doc Sportello's comments rhyme with "Do onto
> others," & that whole "Karma" thing that keeps coming up in Pynchon.

Lot of irony in the motives and actions of P's characters. Hector
tries to "pop Zoyd's cherry."

 The sexual language is important.

In Zoyd's mind, Hector never quite pops Zoyd's cherry. That is, turn
him into a snitch or rat for the government.

The two men meet time and again, at front doors, in cars, in parking
lots, in restaurants ...money and information are exchanged . . . .and
they keep on playing that old S&M Romance, that Sylvester and Tweety.


Zoyd, whose memory of the events is constantly challenged by the text,
 insists that he's exceptional; he never turned, he kept his
virginity, he was romantic and innocent.

Hector insists that Zoyd acted like all the others and that he wasn't
then and is not now a Virgin.


When Zoyd has a baby, he complains to Hector about the persistence of
there chase and be-chased relationship, saying he wants it to end now
that he has a child (no longer a Virgin) and has moved out of all that
dope dealing world.

Zoyd wants to grow up and have a family.  At this point, Hector uses
the Baby, much as BV used the perverted feminist ideology about
Mothers on Frenesi, to get Zoyd to snitch on Shorty. Pop! That's
irony.


Doesn't read like a parable to me. More like an ironic parody of TV
and a satire of the counter culture.