V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 461 - "Mene, mene tekel, upharsin"

[Michael Bailey]

first, thanks for posting on this passage.  It's one that I never
focused on before.

 Richard Ryan wrote:
> I realized on reflection that I mis-stated the scenario here.  It's
> *not* the case that Rachel's wall posting is addressed to the Boys -
> it's directed at Benny specifically.

and, having massively prepared himself for this rejection, courted it
assiduously,
Benny's reaction is "ho-hum"

> Stencil's biblical quotation
> interjects his own paranoid ends into an exchange meant to occur
> between Benny and Rachel exclusively.

It seems like maybe Stencil is pointing it out, in a Scoutmasterly or
donnish way, to Benny, to be helpful.
and maybe it's also Stencil's idea of a witticism?


   Kevin Finucane, in his
> web-published notes on "V.",  observes that "Stencil is...perhaps
> somewhat manipulatively, suggesting obliquely that Profane's
> relationship with Rachel may have run its course."
>

And maybe probing a little, like "how hard is this hitting you, Benny?"
or even giving him a straight line for his "ho-hum"?

>
> Is this the point where "V." truly becomes a "buddy" novel?  With
> Stencil's caustic and subversive Tom coaxing and cajoling Benny's Huck
> back out on the road - the twist here being that Becky Thatcher is in
> love with Huck....
>

doesn't it seem here like Benny and Rachel really are thru, though?

Like, with Josephine he has rejected a (by implication incestuous, or
at least insufficiently exogamous) involvement with her and with the
Latinate, Romance Language, Catholic way of life, and with Rachel he
asserts his individuality again by refusing to climb the other
(Jewish) side of his family tree...

leaving him (spoiler)...



ready to meet up with Brenda Wigglesworth (a prominent Protestant
name, right? and thus a lady from neither his "mensch" or his
"Machiavel" heritage, an unexplored frontier -

http://healingandrevival.com/BioSWigglesworth.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/michael-wigglesworth)



-- 
"The general agreement is that language should be a kind of honey.  I
like it to be a kind of speed." - Michael Moorcock