Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 12: Death by Water

Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 12: Slothrop Gives the Hashish to Säure, Slothrop Returns to Erdmann, the Triptych Dream

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Now back to Slothrop and Greta Erdmann. Slothrop had recently woken from his sodium amytal stupor, finding himself in an abandoned movie studio where he met Erdmann, a former movie actress who often worked for von Göll and who was now in search of her daughter, Bianca (3.10). After their quite violent (though consensual) sexual escapades, Erdmann brought Slothrop to an abandoned working-class district where they ate discarded food and "fuck[ed] each other to sleep," (434) reminiscent of his and Katje’s time at the Casino Hermann Goering.

Slothrop remembers his current task at hand: to return the hashish he retrieved from Potsdam to Emil ‘Säure’ Bummer (minus the little bit which Tchitcherine and Dzǎbajev had stolen from him during his interrogation) for he was promised a million marks for this journey. But then he realizes and asks himself, could this entire plot, the journey into Potsdam and retrieval of the hashish, been a distraction from his self-imposed mission? That of discovering the purpose of the Schwartzgerät and Imipolex G — how they all tied into his life and his past. Slothrop, through his entire journey, has been plagued by the belief that everything within this system has been against him: that each person he met (Katje, Bummer, Marvy), each document read (the V-2 materials at the hotel, those procured for him by Schweitar), each path predetermined or predestined (into the Zone, the castle in Nordhausen, Potsdam), each coincidence presented (Jamf’s reappearance in everything, Imipolex as a part of his past and present), and each paranoia felt (white Rolls-Royces, the validity of his own free will) was all there to move him toward the path that They wanted him on — whether that path be to discover the meaning behind this all or, more likely, to stay far away from a more important discovery. But now he wonders: could all of this actually just be a coincidence? Could none of it have any foundation in that which he gives it credit for? All these webs and interconnections simply being his own disordered mind mapping ideas onto other ideas with no real justification? He calls it an anti-paranoia, and to him, this is worse than the alternative. For, what if none of this was connected? Would the journey be for nothing? Would that mean that this is simply to reality of the world in which he lives and that there is no hope for an alternative?

He momentarily leaves Erdmann to deliver the hashish to Säure, and as he looks around, he perceives that yes, it just may be the world. The lands surrounding him have been utterly destroyed, leaving behind remembrances such as painted doorknobs, piano keys, chunks of concrete that made up the walls of homes, with few to remember them by. It is the Sacramental City once again, “the city as outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual illness or health,” (372, 3.7) and there is only illness to be seen.

He follows his path from the few nights before to find Säure, first to the Chicago Bar (he is not there and the bar is now guarded) and then to the basement in which they slept (the basement now raided and the printing machine — the one which Bodine was going to print Slothrop’s payment from after he returned the hashish — gone as well). But Säure left a token and a message important to Slothrop’s path forward: a chess knight made from the plastic Imipolex G, telling him that der Springer wants to speak with him, and that this knight will tell him who Slothrop is when they meet. When Slothrop initially questioned Säure about the Schwartzgerät, he was told that if he wanted answers, he needed to find this man, der Springer (3.7). Der Springer was later discovered to be a pseudonym for Gerhardt von Göll, the famous film director who often cast Greta Erdmann (3.10), who planned to film the Martin Fierro film with the Argentinian Anarchists to help them invoke their goals (3.9), and who was the director of the infamous nightmare-film, Alpdrücken.

Luckily, Säure did leave Slothrop a map "showing how to get where he is" (436). On his way there, symbols emerge causing Slothrop to once again ponder whether his paranoia is getting the better of him, or if all that he is trying to connect within his head is just another detached coincidence (or, if these connections have actually woven their way into the world and are now a part of our natural lives). Because now, as he walks under the architectural parabolas of Germany, he recalls the parabolic design of the Mittelwerke tunnels, holding their own unique symbology that manifested itself outward into the production of the rockets and the method by which they were produced. Could this symbol have manifested itself into even the most mundane or archetypal sites of our cities, thus calling that same symbology from something once hidden away under mountains and behind closed doors into the streets on which we all traverse? Yes, the secret has been made plain. The death hidden beneath mountains is now lauded in the streets.

Slothrop finds Säure with one of the girls, Trudi, who Slothrop first found him with in the overturned truck. Smoking some of the hashish which Slothrop procured, he tells him that it was der Springer (von Göll) who "blew the whistle on our counterfeiting operation," (438) hence why Slothrop would not be receiving his payment of a million marks. Yet while Slothrop is surprisingly not angry about this, Säure already had a plan and a surprise to appease Slothrop’s loss. For a mere ten thousand pounds sterling, der Springer could attain the Schwartzgerät itself for Slothrop. It seems too good to be true, but Slothrop remembers Geli telling him about a "man in Swinemünde" who could get the device for "half a million Swiss francs," (294, 3.1) so perhaps this rumor is more real than it was initially perceived to be. Though it is not that der Springer already has possession of the Schwartzgerät, only that he (supposedly) has the ability to attain it (for half the money up front, that is). As we’ve learned, der Springer does believe he has the ability to enact change and manifest his directorial visions into the real world, so either he does have this ability to attain the device, or he has a bit too much faith in his powers.

Trudi abandons Gustav, her boyfriend — spoken of much earlier (3.6) when she told Magda (the other girl that was with her and Säure when Slothrop met them) "about her boy friend Gustav, who wants to live inside the piano" (366). Well, he’s really in there now, though that doesn’t stop Trudi from immediately coming onto Slothrop and not just engaging in any normal sexual intercourse, but nasal intercourse, fully immersing herself within his nose — another phallic organ. We have seen numerous scenes so far involving the corporeal or sexual nature of a nose — the terrorizing adenoid (1.2), Neil Nosepicker’s Book of 50,000 Insults in which we got the quote about Slothrop’s sexual conditioning (1.13), Slothrop picking his nose right as a V-2 missile is about to strike¹, or even less sexual uses such as the inability to pronounce certain letters based on nasal structure during the creation of the New Turkic Alphabet (3.5), and the tip of the Rocket being known as a nose-cone. We have seen the nose, itself being a symbol for a penis or a rocket, as something that can penetrate and destroy — a symbol of power — but recently we have seen the ‘holes’ in this symbol. It also, based on nuances within the structure, can prevent true destruction or control as well as being penetrated itself.

Later, Gustav comes out of the piano to debate Säure in their reoccurring Rossini versus Beethoven argument. Gustav believes that Beethoven is the superior composer, giving into his "life filled with tragedy" (440) in order to produce works that represent this pessimistic, darker mindset. Säure believes the opposite: that Gustav’s criticism of Rossini — being he is too ebullient and dedicated to a life filled with fulfilling one’s desires — is laughable. For, why wouldn’t that be what you wanted? Instead of sitting around like Beethoven (or, like the German mindset of the pre- and peri-WWII times) moping about the tragedies of life, wouldn’t it be better to seek love and pleasure? (Ironically enough, throughout this debate, Berlin was being bombarded for the final time, forcing them to yell their points at one another). They even begin classifying the flavor and quality of the marijuana which Magda brings out using various German descriptives following the same ideologies and motifs as their arguments for or against Beethoven and Rossini. Throughout this debate, arguing for pure and simple pleasure against the inundation of tragedy and dedication, Slothrop cannot grasp the point. He likely cannot fathom the one-sidedness of pessimism and optimism, though this all comes to a peak in the ‘tragedy’ of a police raid contrasted by the optimism, or the humor, of Säure’s response. Nonetheless, Slothrop, caring mostly for his own well being, makes a quick escape, heading back to Erdmann who he left sleeping not long ago.

She is angry at his abandonment, throwing a shoe at him when he returns. Paranoid, just as he has always been, she feared for her safety, possibly thought he would never even return. Quickly, they make up. Slothrop falls asleep to her crying, dreaming again of his father. The last time he dreamt of Broderick, his father told him about the birds, and how Slothrop should not worry for their safety (3.10). Now, Slothrop chastises his father, being older in the dream than last time, realizing how his father sold and exploited him by giving him to Jamf just to secure him a place in the Ivy Leagues. It is one of the few moments of Slothrop’s internalized anger that we see. While the anger is targeted at his father, as we know, there were more nefarious characters leading Slothrop to this exploitation — Lyle Bland, for one. His father gave into the world’s greed and necessitated evil whereas those like Bland or Jamf created this world. Slothrop’s blame still lies on the former.

When he awakes, days go by encompassing the same events: Erdmann crying, refusing to eat, desiring sex and Slothrop’s whip despite his loss of desire from all the sleepless nights and attempts at placation. This is a distraction to his mission, but not one that is entirely her fault. The fear instilled in a people by the perpetrators of the War, or of any means of societal subjugation and exploitation, leads to the inability to organize, protest, or fight back. Similarly, here, the paranoia and fear that has become a part of the both of them has led to a pause in Slothrop’s plan to find the Schwartzgerät and even her plan to find Bianca. All that fear and insatiable desire for pain will inevitably lead to more paranoia, in this case leading Slothrop on a mini-Oedipa-Maas-like WASTE fugue² as he begins seeing symbols, faces, and messages wherever he goes. The paranoia begins to inhabit their subconscious minds, manifesting itself in Erdmann through the evocation of her past film-set memories — the gunshots and sharp noises on von Göll’s sets — and in Slothrop through these visions and his dreams.

Slothrop has a dream in three parts, a triptych mimicking scenes from the Biblical Genesis along with allusions to Eliot’s The Waste Land. Part I witnesses the perversion of the ‘taking on of life,’ akin to the boarding of Noah’s Ark. It is the ‘saving’ of various species, and life itself, through a masochistic bestiality, similar to how Erdmann may have viewed the act of her fantasized rapes when Slothrop left her tied down. Part II holds the key color to the story — violet: the end of the rainbow. Death. For, at the end of the rainbow, the landing point of the rocket, lies either the realm of the dead, or as Ilse would have hoped, the Moon. The woman’s husband takes her out on a river where it can be assumed, based on Part III, that she either committed suicide or was murdered by her husband. But in Part III, death is proven not to be the end. We see that despite Eliot’s statement to “Fear death by water”³ and the Biblical parallel with God’s threat of The Flood (both of which the woman experiences firsthand), life will spring from death. Whereas in The Wasteland it is unclear if life will spring from death — “‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / ‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”⁴ — Slothrop’s dream shows that it will. The life within the woman, now drowned, is about to fade. However, the Argentinian Anarchist, Squalidozzi, as a Neptune figure, the God of the unpredictable seas, brings the woman back to the surface as life pours out of her. She is placed on lands and the water no longer surrounds her, just as God’s flood had subsided, making way for the life that had boarded Noah’s Ark, or the woman’s womb, to be saved.

The dream stays with Slothrop because he possibly sees the rebirth, or the saving, of the world within it. These various forms of control and subjugation — whether they be political, sexual, martial, or otherwise — have led to an attempted conservation of life. But this is not enough; rescue must come in the form of change. An entire tearing down of the system itself, be that by Squalidozzi’s desire of an anarchist state or a reworking toward another new and better system. “This dream will not leave him” (447) because he sees its truth and does not act upon it. His journey, at the moment, the discovery of why and how he himself has been controlled, takes precedence over all else. He does not have the will to save the dying body beneath the sea, allowing life to once again flow “to its proper love” (447).

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Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 13

1. I know this happens early in Part 1 (I believe in 1.4?) though I can’t remember or find exactly where. Feel free to comment if you know the exact spot.

2. The Crying of Lot 49, Chapter 5; where Oedipa walks around the city seeing the Tristero symbol everywhere.

3. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965. The Waste Land : and Other Poems. London :Faber and Faber, 1999.

4. Ibid.