Gravity's Rainbow - Part 1 - Chapter 6: Desensitization Toward Zero
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 1 - Chapter 6: Roger and Jessica
In the complex modern world of the mid-20th-century (and its analog in Gravity’s Rainbow) where everything is driven by consumption and the desire for consumption, where we have characters representing entire nations, where conspiracies are run in a series of ever circling layers that are impossible to parse, it is often easy to forget about the little human desires and needs that still make it worth living in — how we may simply want to lie in bed with the one we love. Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake, briefly introduced in the previous chapter, give us this insight into the humanity still alive and well in a world even as destitute as this. Of course, even the more difficult parts of love are still present, in this case, that of Jessica’s boyfriend, Beaver, Roger being only her lover. But even those aspects give humanity to the world.
Within the world of Gravity’s Rainbow, Roger and Jessica act as surrogates for what humanity should be. Jessica being the pure individual, born during the wars and knowing nothing different, but finding herself within it understanding that it should not be as such. Roger, well, he knows what is happening, and for a reason we will discuss later, he is the Everyman standing in for us — the man born outside of the war and who has now seen the war change the world he has come to know for the worse. The two together, at times, are hard to distinguish for with “Each new flame, [there is] a new face. And there’ve been the moments, more of them lately too — times when face-to-face there has been no way to tell which of them is which” (38). The are copies of each other, of how the human mind has been conditioned to accept the world around them — the difference being what the defining factor in their life is: Roger’s being the war and Jessica’s being yet unknown, for again, she knows nothing but the war.
They met in tragedy — attempting to have an average moment where one of the two gains the confidence to strike up a flirtatious conversation. Even if the methods seem to be a bit odd, creepy even, it is still the acted-upon-hope that a normal world exists amongst all the war and exploitation (behind some curtain perhaps). But this meeting is cut off quickly by, you guessed it, a rocket strike. Despite the inherent tragedy of love or lust being unable to simply occur as it was meant to, this rocket brings them together, and Jessica gets in the car so they can travel to safety. The contemporary world seems only to allow connections to be formed through destruction.
Maybe this is where Roger’s nihilism stems from, for the things that sets him apart from Jessica, that which allows us to distinguish “which of them is which” is his absolute desensitization to all that has happened around him. Whereas Jessica (as we’ll especially see and discuss in the next chapter) holds onto her emotive capacities for tragedy, Roger has “forgotten his first corpse, or when he first saw someone living die. […] He’s become the Dour Young Man of “The White Visitation” (39-40). He has seen so much tragedy and death and yet his job simply has him calculating numbers and statistics to find patterns among these dead. He has to deal with the unspeakable “they” as well: those “white collars rigid in the shadows” (40). He is the old guard who has seen the hellish changes and has now lost hope that they can be fixed. He needs his “Jessica” to hopefully bring back that flame.
Roger may even believe (and likely does believe, given his inherent ability to see beyond the veil) that they have been purposefully desensitizing the masses. But why? For what reason would they do this? So, that when we see tragedy, we do nothing. So that when Roger and Jessica see a fire burning they
… might have stopped. But they’re both alumni of the Battle of Britain, both have been drafted into the early black mornings and the crying for mercy[.] By the time one has pulled one’s nth victim or part of a victim free of one’s nth pile of rubble […] it has ceased to be that personal . . . the value of n may be different for each of us, but I’m sorry: sooner or later . . . (41)
you just won’t care.
The best they can do for the moment to hold onto love — to hold onto each other and hold onto the past. To do this, they both live in a small house in an area that has been so bombed out that there would really be no reason to believe anything else would statistically hit them. Jessica has brought old belongings to remind them of better days. If they have these little things, they can continue on with the “propaganda” for now. They will work for groups they don’t believe in so that they can maintain their love. What other choice do they have?
Not much to report this week. Roger and Jessica are amazing characters though. They’re such a joy to read about. They really bring about some of the most beautifully human aspects of the novel.
Up Next: Part 1 — Chapter 7
"my mother is the war."