Mason & Dixon Analysis
Part 1: Latitudes and Departures
Part 1 - Chapter 0: Material and Spiritual Worlds
The world and people ‘evolved’ in regard to colonization, imperialism, monopolization, and Empire within the 180 years that spanned between the event of Mason & Dixon and Gravity’s Rainbow. But the inherent purpose of colonies (if colonies could be said to have an inherent purpose) largely remained the same. They are of course used to extract resources, free or nearly free labor, acquire land, build upon that land, increase private property, and so forth.
Part 1 - Chapter 1: Writers of History
Our story begins during Christmastide of 1786 in the Philadelphia home of a wealthy couple: husband and arms dealer John Wade LeSpark and his wife Elizabeth LeSpark. It is a beautiful home, one which even 240 years previous to our contemporary era was able to build ‘outbuildings’ on their property, afford sleds with “Runners carefully dried and greased,” could refer to its kitchen as a great Kitchen, owned numerous types of pots and pans for various forms of cooking . . .
Part 1 - Chapter 2: Humble Preludes
Mason and Dixon’s portion of the story begins with introductions. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had never met before. The former worked as the Assistant to James Bradley, the Astronomer Royale, from 1756-1760 in Greenwich — an area of South-East London. The latter, though we don’t know all that much about him, studied under the mathematician William …
Part 1 - Chapter 3: Pythia's Song
Revd Cherrycoke doesn’t exactly recollect Mason and Dixon’s first meeting, nor their own recollection of their first meeting, and not even his own recollection of how they believed they remembered their own first meeting to be. His story of how they met is through fatigue and many winding paths: how he listened to them tell the story about how they thou…
Part 1 - Chapter 4: Mutual Extortion
We are back in the house of the LeSpark’s, or in other words, back in the America that was formed from Mason and Dixon’s quest — the America which is now presenting the history of those two men for better or worse. Revd Wicks Cherrycoke is the one still telling the story, only being allowed to stay in the home of the LeSparks if he tells it like the Eli…
Part 1 - Chapter 5: An Invisible Face
When Mason and Dixon first met (1.3), they only learned select things about one another. Through their slightly awkward conversations, they learned of each other’s superficial desires along with how they interact with the world around them; however, it wasn’t until the Seahorse was attacked that either of them truly knew the moral and situational fiber of their being.
Part 1 - Chapter 6: The Microcosmos
The previous chapter’s letter exchange is now being discussed in the home of the LeSparks. Despite the fact that they were both threatened with legal prosecution if they disobeyed, Mason and Dixon cared a bit more about the preservation of their lives than the act of legal repercussions. So, while they agreed to continue with the plan to map the Transit…
Part 1 - Chapter 7.1: Daughters of Job
The white man’s arrival in Africa has never presaged anything good. And here we are again. For leagues, Mason and Dixon, still aboard the Seahorse, passing the mountains at Tenerife and onward toward the continent, had watched as “the unreadable Map-scape of Africa had unaccountably emerg’d” (58). South past Namibia where the Herero genocide would occur a little more than a century later, the ship arrived at the Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope — known today as Cape Town, South Africa.
Part 1 - Chapter 7.2: Shadow Leaders
Not all men hold entirely evil intentions in their heart. As Mason and Dixon begin discussing the events of Austra’s pimping (and to some extent, the pimping of all the women in the house), Mason reveals that while he does have certain uncouth desires, he is willing to go to certain lengths to suppress them so that he is not tempted to act. In this case, what he is asking Dixon to help him find among the native people is an ‘Indifference-Draught’ — an unconventional means to fight against the seduction plot.
Part 1 - Chapter 8: Commodity Fetishism
As we have seen, Dixon has a bit of interest in foreign commodities and modes of life. Whether that be a fetishization of the ‘other’ or a genuine interest in the reality of those native populations’ lives is unclear, though given we have no reason to think otherwise, it’s likely somewhere in between. Because of this interest, he has been “making direct…
Part 1 - Chapter 9: Baptismal Parallax
Mason has shown himself unwilling to give into the plot set about by the Vrooms. He has refused the daughters, the mother, and Austra. It therefore goes to show that, like discussed last chapter, Mason may subconsciously have some of the more abhorrent desires that the Vrooms (and even to some extent Dixon) have, but his control over them is saintly. No…
Part 1 - Chapter 10: Vectors of Desire
From his Unpublished Sermons, Cherrycoke expounds on the connection between material and spiritual worlds. He elaborates on how our connection with nature is like our connection with God; independent of our comprehension of these entities (for example, how their laws work or what purpose they ultimately serve), our trajectory around them is the same. Wi…
Part 1 - Chapter 11: The Progress of Empire
At home, the LeSpark clan discusses Saint Helena, the next destination of Mason and Dixon after leaving the Cape of Good Hope. Saint Helena, found by Europe in the early 1500s, was quickly colonized by the British East India Company (EIC). It was later taken over by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) until the EIC once again reclaimed the land not long …
Part 1 - Chapter 12: The Many Faces of Time
In a bar on Saint Helena known as The Moon, Mason and Dixon sit with Maskelyne, the soon-to-be Astronomer Royale who was originally to be Mason’s partner during the Transit of Venus and who was later paired with Waddington due to a bit of nepotism (1.7). Though, ironically enough, Mason and Dixon were the only pairing of the two groups who actually some…
Part 1 - Chapter 13.1: Skin Deep Scrutiny
Mason and Dixon have just said their good-byes. Dixon is out at sea yet again. On the beach, staring out at the water, stands Maskelyne, possibly waiting for Mason to walk back in from seeing off his friend. When Maskelyne asks if he and Mason should “enter again the Atlantick Whore-House, find Breakfast, and get to work,” (125) Mason realizes the simil…
Part 1 - Chapter 13.2: A Paradox of Power
Shortly after Mason was forced to go out and secure the roof, he and Maskelyne open up another bottle. Maskelyne, ever the philosopher, continues pondering about the many implications of Saint Helena. This time he compares it to theater: “A little traveling Stage-Troupe, is St. Helena really, all performance” (133). He states that whatever occurs here w…
Part 1 - Chapter 14: Hell Painted White
No longer with Maskelyne, Mason stands atop a ridge thinking of Dixon. The two have not been together for long and have been briefly apart for an even shorter period, yet still Mason feels like he has lost a part of himself. When the story gets just a bit too precise, one of the twins, Pitt, questions Cherrycoke, asking him how he could possibly know th…
Part 1 - Chapter 15: Empty Bastions
While Dixon is still at the Cape of Good Hope, Maskelyne convinces Mason to travel to Sandy Bay, the opposite side of Saint Helena from James’s Town. So, where Saint Helena’s James’s Town may represent the coming imperialist world — or, in Pynchon’s words, “a Parable about Slavery and Free Will” (158) — the unsheltered side of the island disturbs Mason …
Part 1 - Chapter 16: Allegory of Intemperance
Having just expressed his grief and regret to Dixon (1.15), Mason thinks it best to tell him a story of his and Rebekah’s meeting. Dixon insisted that Mason does so in order to move past his grief and Mason agrees, though what we are about to see is anything but the truth. Mason’s white lie is said to serve to protect Rebekah — though what that means is…
Part 1 - Chapter 17: Inciting Events
Following the advice of Rebekah’s ghost, Mason arrives at Break-Neck, a valley “just a couple of miles southeast of Jamestown along the shore” (Biebel, 84). The closer they get to James’s Town, the less noticeable the wind becomes; the further Mason gets away from the bare bones of the coming Imperialist world and the closer he gets to those acute pleas…
Part 1 - Chapter 18: Derealization
Mason and Dixon have ‘escaped’ the winds of Saint Helena and returned to England. While everything they saw there and at Cape Town could at best be described as hell, upon reporting to the Royal Society, they “find they have nothing but good to say of all they have met at St. Helena and the Cape” (183). It is obviously a lie in the same manner that work…