Mason & Dixon - Part 1 - Chapter 9: Baptismal Parallax
Analysis of Mason & Dixon, Part 1 - Chapter 9: Johanna's Desire, the Darkling Beetle, Rain, a Lesson on 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. Nonetheless, there is still a tension between him and Johanna as they wait alone “in an upper Bedroom, in unshutter’d afternoon light swiftly fading” (87). Johanna admits to him that though she is complicit in all of this, she has a guilt associated with the path she has chosen. Her disenfranchisement with the plot and with colonization as a whole has even led to her to lose desire for her husband, Cornelius, leading to her own internal turmoil as she daydreams about other possibilities for her love and lust. Well, even though she is aware that Mason has held steady up to this point, and even though her part in the plan was only ever to get Austra to sleep with Mason, Johanna’s little epiphany (if you can call it that) makes her realize that she actually desires him as well. But as she makes the attempt to finally seduce him, a knock comes at the door from Jet who is only trying to proceed with the plan as normal, leading Mason to jump out the window to avoid a situation he likely did not want to be in in the first place. (Or did he?)
With Mason out the window and down in the mud, Jet and Johanna have one other soul in the room still with them: a “Darkling Beetle […] in its cage” (88) taken from its home in the arid Kalahari Desert far north of Cape Town, encompassing the three-way border between northern South Africa, eastern Namibia, and most of western Botswana. Brought down here to coastal Cape Town where temperatures are different, humidity is far higher, and rainfall is more common, it may as well be in an alien land. The beetle has been traded as a commodity, held as a pet, and fetishized just as so many objects, peoples, and actions were fetishized in the previous chapter (1.8). And today in its cage, “it can feel something undeniably on the way, something it cannot conceive of, perhaps as Humans apprehend God,— as a Force they are ever just about to become acquainted with” (88). Though reductive, this is the same way that people, slaves or not, will feel as they approach a new land — or how the Natives of a land will react when the traditions and objects of a place they have never seen are brought to their own. They will feel encaged where they had once felt free. Their worth will have been reduced from a contributor to the clan, the family, or the ecosystem to that of trade value and the entertainment or curiosity of another. Their mind will attempt to find answers to why all that they have ever known is changing entirely. But not only that, no. For things will not merely change, but will be altered in ways that warp what they thought possible in the world, just as the beetle now believes it is about to meet God as the rain rolls in.
The rain does come, and with it a storm. Because of this, Cornelius is trapped upcountry until it passes, Dixon is trapped in the ‘prohibited’ quarters he so often visits, and Mason is trapped at home with none but the very women he is most trying to avoid. Johanna and Jet have already made their move upon Mason, and with the rain, Els does as well. But to avoid this, even with the hard rains outside, Mason makes treks back and forth between the house and those outer districts.
As he is making his way home from one of these treks, he arrives back at the Vroom household. Instead of making his way in the typical manner because the door has been locked, he sees an upper-story window that may be open and climbs a conspicuously placed ladder only to realize that it was not. The ladder is thus stripped out from under him leading to his falling into the mud below for the second time this chapter. And while he accepts his place down here, a glowing beetle scuttles across him. He ponders the difference between the beetle’s perception of rain and man’s. The beetle, with no scientific discovery of rain’s origin or of what it even is, could only ever view it as a supernatural or spiritual phenomena. Man, having studied the skies, knows now about the function and origin of clouds, the triggers for rainfall, the fact that it will eventually cease. This is another tension between the spiritual and material worlds — the reaction to events occurring to the people, animals, insects, or plants, versus a discovery of the literal and methodological reasons for them along with how we should react and why. Biebel states, “There is debate to be had about which perspective is preferable” (Biebel, 50) and the truth is that neither one really is. The former can produce both fear or awe while the latter can produce curiosity or complacency. Delving into the very roots of one while ignoring even the bare branches of another will only ever lead to the more negative outcome of each — fear and complacency.
Time skips again, taking us to a scene of the astronomers’ reunion. They discuss how the two, in their written request to the Royal Society, asked to be sent to Skanderoon instead of Sumatra (1.5) — Skanderoon being a Turkish district now known as İskenderun (and before Mason and Dixon’s time being known as Alexandria). In the rain, they can only think of tropical lands — lands where instead of witnessing the atrocities imposed upon the world by men, instead of being pummeled by relentless rain, they could rest and relax.
The two — tailed secretly by the three daughters and Austra — make their way up to the observatory. Jet, Greet, and Els discuss with Austra how their father does not approve of them going out among the true Africans of the continent, worrying that they will be tempted by these ‘African boys.’ This is reminiscent of how Cornelius wanted to keep the girls away from ketjap since he believed that it would tempt them away from the path he set out for them and onto the path toward sympathy for the oppressed. Austra, however, knows that while this is the fear of the white man, a major fear of the oppressed population is that their women will lose the social value that they held. For just as in America, we see a fetishization (specifically not a glorification) of the black man, while the African women are stolen from “without pause of apology,” (90) left without their men, their families, without the pedestal on which they might once have stood, the glorification which they deserved, the position meant for them and them alone. There are levels within all of this colonization. For while the typical leftist often ignores identity outside of class relations, things are not always so simple. Class and ‘country’ may very well be the broadest and most deciding factor regarding oppressions. Yet, substrata exist even among the oppressed. It arrives, showing that those within the classes or the groups who are above others within their own disempowered demographic may thus learn the tactics that their own oppressors imposed upon them, allowing them to impose these tactics on the women, the queer, or the poor of their own so to hopefully reach up and grasp something more. In this way, the quote-unquote ‘oppressed’ class of the oppressors, such as young white women like Jet, Greet, and Els, seek to elevate themselves by fetishizing the least oppressed of the class they are oppressing. It is a way which allows those without the apex of power to get a taste of what it may be like to possess it — the sole desire for class climbing without possessing that actual possibility. It is a lie, and an illusion, meant only to give certain members of the oppressed just enough hope and potentially even the lightest touch of power to render them docile, unwilling to fight back, and even antagonistic against those who are ‘lesser’ than them who want to fight back.
As they reach the observatory, the sun began to darken, giving hints of coming rapture. The storm begins again, and the four women reveal that they have been following the astronomers so to get inside the observatory and avoid the rain, crowding in and laying upon the furniture. Mason takes this as an opportunity to educate them on why the two of them are here, so begins his lecture on the Transit of Venus. Of course, the girls are not exactly here for that, but most scientists, teachers, or those who are heavily passionate about a certain topic, will take any opportunity to ramble about that which they love, especially if someone is compelled to listen. Obviously, the real reason they are here is for the girls to once again attempt to get Mason to sleep with Austra, though this is where Mason begins to see the girls’ innocence in the endeavor. For, as Biebel states, “Mason observes that their manner of protesting [in regard to learning of the Transit] must be learned from ‘their Owners,’” which suggests that if this “behavior is learned rather than ‘inborn,’ then maybe it can be unlearned” (Biebel, 51). In the same train of thought, this is exactly what Cherrycoke is attempting with Pitt, Pliny, Brae, and even those like Ethelmer. While they have all been indoctrinated into a certain form of thought by those higher and more powerful than them, they have not been fully converted or transformed. So, Cherrycoke, through Mason’s coming lesson, will attempt to engender some of this ‘unlearning’ as well.
The lesson that comes arrives in shades of good and evil. Venus, so often a white spot of light in the darkened night sky, will soon turn black as it moves in front of the sun. It is the same object with multiple identities. Black, to the girls and to the colonizers, so often the color of evil, is usually the opposite to Pynchon. He has always seen white as the representation of death or evil (be that Weissmann, the word bleach in Blicero, the OSS [Office of Strategic Services] calling to mind bone, the colonizers versus colonized, and so on). Though even that gets turned on its head every so often. Which is why the transit (and in a broader view, history) must be observed with what Mason and Dixon call ‘parallax.’ In other words, viewing the exact same event from different ‘perspectives.’ In the case of the Transit of Venus, this is done by placing different astronomers in different locations across the world (similar to how we had learned that Maskelyne and Waddington were scripted to observe the same event on an island in the Atlantic while Mason and Dixon were originally scripted to do so in Sumatra, though now are in South Africa). This observational parallax will account for any significant error or bias that could occur if only one viewpoint were taken into account. Similarly, in the case of history or any narrative for that matter, parallax can be used in order to remove this same error and bias. So, through Mason’s lesson, we are actually seeing Cherrycoke including, once again, another encoded message to the children (it is also the case that Mason was trying to impart this message to the girls). Both ways though, we, the girls, and the LeSpark children, are being asked to consider that which we are told and who it is being told by. We may view certain symbols like black and white as a set standard, but what or who were these standards set by, and why were they set in the first place? At one time and place, one may represent good and at another it may represent evil or some area in between. History works in the same way. Why do some parts of the world view a certain major event as unforgiveable while others say it was a necessary evil, and some may even say an overall good? Why do countries always believe they are on the right side of the war while the country they are fighting against believes anything but? Why is baptism said to wash away sin when sin will inevitably return? Parallax is required to obtain the full picture. Yet, while this may seem quite obvious, unfortunately the average person will learn this information and wonder if it is worth delving further into, or “even caring” (93).
Up Next: Part 1, Chapter 10