Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 14: Modern Gods of the Dead
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 14: Slothrop and Erdmann in Bad Karma, Boarding the Anubis, Miklos Thanatz, the Orgy
Slothrop and Erdmann left the shelter they found in the Zone and have begun making their way to Swinemünde — the location where Geli told Slothrop that he could meet a man who would sell him the Schwarzgerät (3.1), the fact of which was reinforced when Säure mentioned der Springer being able to sell it to him (3.12). They travel down the Spree-Oder canal, Slothrop still in his Rocketman uniform, and along the way pass through a resort town called Bad Karma which Erdmann recalls visiting before the beginning of WWII with a man named Sigmund.1
But what is Bad Karma? It is, to many readers, a seemingly random stop in Slothrop’s journey — another little bit written for no apparent reason. What it really is is the waypoint, or a port, between Slothrop’s initial entrance into the Zone (his passive observations, initial meetings, mindless quests) and his active participation within it.2 One will soon discover the ominous specter “standing so rigid by the central spring,” a ghostly smile, and “all the malaise of a Europe dead and gone” (458). This figure knows them both. The figure is an evil spirit that haunts Erdmann for a thing she had done here, and which is ready to haunt Slothrop for something he will do in his future. We see Erdmann cower at the sight of it, hiding in Slothrop’s shoulder. She knows she is now his guide and that she is only guiding him toward his own haunting, willingly or otherwise.3
Slothrop went to look for Erdmann who he could not find. (Though it is revealed that he will eventually learn where she ran off to and that it would only increase his feelings of dread). So, he sits, drinks, smokes, waiting. She appears out of the dark telling him that Bianca, the daughter who she has been seeking, will arrive soon on a boat, a yacht really, filled with many of her friends. This yacht will be that turning point in Slothrop’s journey, the location where he becomes an active participant in the imbibement that the Elite satiate their lust in.4
Erdmann is quickly welcomed aboard the boat since she is already a part of the clan — an established denizen of hell: a Virgil figure to Slothrop’s Dante. And though Slothrop attempts to board, he is not a part of the same existence as she, so he must be bathed in the River Styx and arrive, reborn, into Hell. It is a comical baptism — cartoonish even — with the ladder stripped away as he is climbing, only for him to plunge deep into the waters. While he is down here, Slothrop begins his rebirth, the rope cut like an umbilical cord, just as he has been reborn in different guises numerous times before: himself at ACHTUNG, himself in the nude running through the Hotel, himself as a Private, as a standard working man, as Ian Scuffling, as Max Schlepzig, as Rocketman. But now is the first time where a persona is forcefully stripped from him, the costume (his false heroism) having to be shed to be able to swim back to the surface. So Slothrop is reborn anew and begins to climb aboard the Anubis.
Anubis, similar to Charon (the boatsman leading the dead across the River Styx), was believed in Egyptian Mythology to be the God who led the dead to their final judgements. It is ironic since those aboard the ship, while technically living, embodied the concept of Death. They have capitalized on the lawlessness and freedom of the Zone, seeing the Third Reich plummeting into nothingness, and building up something similar though more pervasive and veiled than before. So, it is no surprise that Slothrop, even removed from his old personas, is about to be exiled — the riders chopping at the rope he is using to climb. It is only by chance that the hand of a girl come out to save him: Stefania Procalowska, wife to the owner of the Anubis. Slothrop has been deemed worthy by someone at least. Perhaps those Ivy League days really did deem him easily trustable and manipulable by the powers that be — “‘Sure. In that America, it’s the first thing they tell you. Harvard’s there for other reasons. The ‘educating’ part of it is just sort of a front’” (2.2, 193).
While Slothrop removes the remaining pieces of his uniform and showers (eventually putting on a tuxedo owned by one of the Elite who rides the ship, just so happening to fit him perfectly), Stefania tells him that Erdmann has happily found her daughter and is now attempting something she has been trying to do for a long time: begin Bianca on a career in film. Following in her own footsteps. This, here, is the beginning of Bianca’s characterization and thematic purpose. She, like Ilse, will be an observation on the death of innocence. However, whereas Ilse shows this death in its relation to WWII and the Third Reich’s evils, Bianca represents the same thing but in relation to the post-WWII world and the Fourth Reich.5 We first see this in the inherent desire that the mother, knowing the suffering that comes with it, wishes the same cycle to reoccur to her daughter; the movie star that she was will be reborn in Bianca. It is alluding to the coming idea of a ‘child star,’ a child who would be exploited and likely abused before their innocence should naturally have gone in order to extract profit and satiate a perverted lust (this concept is also highly mappable on various other exploitable positions). Erdmann did not see this purely as an exploitative practice, for she certainly would not be the one profiting from Bianca’s hardships. She simply has been conditioned to desire the repetition of this exploitative cycle so that she could find validation in what she had also been subjected to.
Slothrop and Stefania discuss the conception of Bianca — how, while we had our own belief of how she was conceived (through the real Max Schlepzig’s on-screen rape of Greta Erdmann in Gerhart von Göll’s film, Alpdrücken), there was more to the original film than met the eye. After the initial rape, “jackal men [came] in to ravish and dismember the captive baroness” (461). They are Anubis anima who do not only ferry the dead to their judgement but take the living and slaughter them to produce the dead as well. And after this slaughter, black hooded men proceed to have their way with Erdmann,6 rendering any surety of Bianca’s parenthood impossible to discover.7
Bianca, a daughter born of a nightmarish rape, is thus fatherless, largely motherless, and is being used for the satiation of lust and the accumulation of profit. On top of this, Erdmann (and her husband, Miklos Thanatz8) seems to be pimping out her daughter to various older men, though most view it as simply allowing her to sleep with them, possibly even believing that this ‘allowance’ is giving Bianca the fulfillment she desires.
The Anubis, based on these initial implications and what is to come, is a representation of the hidden world, the power that the elite class (They) will come to hold in the post-WWII timeline, and the evil they can so easily get away with. It parallels the Noah’s Ark imagery within Slothrop’s previous dream where the woman bore the beasts of the world in hope of saving their lives (3.12); but now, instead of saving the downtrodden souls, the riders of the ark are those who rule the world. All else are free to drown in their wake. Slothrop, now having been ‘purified’ and redressed, is told that “‘Anything wandering around […] is fair game,’” (462) which is exactly the sort of thing the ruling class has access to at all times. It is stated in their Welcome Aboard! number that this world of the elite is a perpetual and ‘bestial’ orgy where any ‘prob-lems’ are thrown out in favor of the continuation of the attainment of power or subjugation over those with less power. The orgy is occurring with the passengers of the ship having sex, snorting and swallowing various drugs or even drugging other passengers, and then Slothrop spots the mother and daughter reunited — Bianca and Greta Erdmann. Slothrop not yet giving into his lusts, does admit to himself that Bianca, at eleven or twelve years old, is one of his taboo desires. He has highly pedophilic tendencies which he has not acted upon just yet9; however, being that he now has the option to get whatever he desires on the Anubis without any repercussion, the thought runs through his mind.
The woman who attempted to cut Slothrop down with the cleaver is telling a story that Slothrop overhears. It is a story of Erdmann’s one time mission to attain Oneirine.10 She was tasked with finding it and did so via a man named Wimpe.11 Substances such as Oneirine were created as a method of control, causing dependence while removing all aspects of pain, thus allowing users to perform Their bidding without the repercussions of the pain usually associated with these tasks. ‘Pain’ can obviously be physical, though likely in Erdmann’s case, due to the new knowledge that she and her husband Thanatz has been pimping out Bianca to the Elites, it is also a mental numbing. And like other opiates (heroin, oxycontin, methadone, etc.) which were also presented as the safe, nonaddictive, no side-effect version of their predecessors, this certainly was also not the case.
Miklos Thanatz appears while Slothrop is eavesdropping on this conversation. He immediately, responding to Slothrop’s questioning, tells him that, to him, the A4 Rocket is a religious figure, even going as far as saying it represents "baby Jesus, with endless committees of Herods out to destroy it in infancy" (464). So, he fetishizes the concept of the Rocket, turning it into a Messiah, or the coming savior of the human race. He compares the perpetrators of the Rocket to Herod, the ruler of Judea who ordered the slaughter of innocents in the hope of killing Jesus. On top of this, he compares the Rocket to a phallic, penetrative object. So not only has Thanatz given the Rocket ‘flesh’ (via the idea of the rocket as a sexual and desirous object) but a ‘spirit’ as well, and a religious glow to that spirit.
Turns out that much of this fetishizing and worshipping of the Rocket came from Thanatz’s time in Nordhausen and with Blicero. He tells the story of their work on the A4, how they fled from Nordhausen "back across the Niedersächsisch oil fields" (465) which would have led them to the Lüneburg Heath where Blicero would eventually launch the 00000 rocket. He describes Blicero’s insanity once they had reached that point and how he had Gottfried with him by then as well. Therefore, Blicero’s mental state has been tracked across Germany beginning with his reintroduction into the country (post-Herero genocide) leading to Peenemünde where he was a mildly sane Lieutenant, to Nordhausen where he had begun to fight with Enzian and become less often seen and far more unkempt (3.11), and then onto the Heath where his severance from Enzian was complete, his insanity made whole, and Gottfried (and the 00000) as his only means of control on the world. Finally, it is implicated that something happened to Gottfried at the Heath, though it is not clear what just yet.
Bianca (not by coincidence mentioned immediately after Gottfried) and Erdmann (perhaps a parallel to Blicero in this scene) take stage. The crowd of elites watch on as Bianca performs what amounts to a light strip tease while she performs a Shirley Temple song. It is a blending of the innocence of childhood with the life of a child star (note: when I say ‘child star’ this can be mapped onto the idea of the life of any average person who still has hope attempting to make it in the world), initially being caught up in the grandeur of fame and stardom but with the reality of exploitation and sexualization being hidden away behind the curtains. Shirley Temple, for instance, while underage, was forced to perform roles which sexualized her from her first scene onward and was even punished by being locked in a box and forced to sit on a block of ice if she ever misbehaved. The ‘child star’ was, and is, used for all of these reasons: the profit that could be capitalized on them via feeding into the perverse lusts of those more powerful than the ‘child star’, the sexual gratification of the creator of these films who would be able to abuse or exploit the children with little to no fear of repercussions due to the lack of power of the ‘star’ themselves, the ‘star’s’ inherent desire to maintain their stardom, and the ingrained idea that this form of abuse is not abuse. So, this plays out in front of Slothrop and the crowd, and every single one of them, Slothrop included (now as the American Elite among the Nations), watches on with lust.
This viewing begins an orgy with the participation of the entire ship. Every member, independent of gender, age, or nationality, begins to fuck in every possible manner: anally, vaginally, orally, and in ways less natural. There are even two twin schoolgirls participating, who while not explicitly said to be underage, likely are — or at least represent the idea that this is what the Elite class would desire to have at their parties.12 And every last one of them, it appears, cums at the same time, except for the lone Japanese man watching from above. The group experiences sexual climax simultaneously because Their elite fantasy has been fulfilled; this is what they want: the sexual gratification of their wildest dreams at any moment they could so choose. It is not just what They want, but also what They have achieved; for, upon rebuilding the world from the blank canvas to one of their choosing, from the Third to the Fourth Reich, from a world for the People to one for the Elites, They will have the freedom to rape and slobber over the innocent while the world erupts in fire. The world will be Theirs and there will not be a thing anyone can do about it. Some of those below them, like Slothrop, may even choose to join in the orgy because of their desire for a class mobility more intense and evil than the typical form — one that takes them from a class of proletariat to one surpassing the general bourgeoisie. One which will make wealth and capital a mere object of unimportance and which will feed every desire and lust they possess.
The Japanese man, who we will come to know as Ensign Morituri, is the only passenger not participating. And not only does he not participate, but he only watches — not touching himself, not filming, just observing the group. It is unclear why as of now, though we will learn his story soon. As the orgy further dies down, with just a few stragglers continuing in their fun, the Anubis moves “down the river, toward Swinemünde” (468).
Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 15
Meant to call Sigmund Freud to mind. He was Greta Erdmann’s psychoanalyst and partner. There will be more on him and the reason for his inclusion in this location later.
I will not get into what his active participation entails (though we will get to that in 3.15), but this chapter does act as both a waypoint and a broader societal foreshadowing of Slothrop’s (or America’s) participation within the expanding worldwide post-WWII Reich.
This ominous figure also heavily reminds me of another similar figure in Bleeding Edge: the one that Maxine discovers when breaking into the basement of Gabriel Ice’s mansion which causes her to flee (Chapter 17). I do think there is a connection, but you’ll have to wait like 6 years before I get to that book, so sorry…
Remember, though, that Bad Karma was the waypoint between these two phases of Slothrop’s life, because we will be returning here, in the form of a story, to better understand what this waypoint and what the woman by the spring more specifically represent.
The concept of the Fourth Reich is attributed to Michael S. Judge and his Death is Just Around the Corner podcast. If you have not listened to it, the Fourth Reich is a term used for the Nazi spread throughout the world after WWII. Specifically, the world that was remapped onto the ‘blank canvas’ of the Zone that I have been speaking of. Where the world was technically wiped clean in a sense, something was built over it. This construction was a society in which fascist power structures would emerge in the hidden crevices of the modern world, where exploitation and wrongful death would be mere byproducts of the coming political landscape, where shadow organizations would run the ‘nations’ and people would be so brainwashed into believing otherwise. (The implications of this coming Reich are explored far more in Pynchon’s California novels — The Crying of Lot 49, Inherent Vice, and Vineland — along with Bleeding Edge).
Black hooded men call to mind the stocking faced men in The Courier’s Tragedy within Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (Chapter 3) or in Mr. Thoth’s Story of the same novel (Chapter 4).
Also, this exact filmed scene of black hooded men coming to rape Erdmann will reoccur later, so it is also one to remember.
Note that Thanatz comes from Thanatos, another God of Death. Though this one is not a guide but a bringer of death.
These have been seen a few times, specifically in his attraction to Geli who while not underage, Slothrop did admit she appeared so.
Jamf’s opiate derivative which would ostensibly negate pain while providing no side-effects (3.5). It was also present in the scene when the Argentinian Anarchist’s submarine missed Bodine’s ship in space but not in time (3.8)
Wimpe being the salesman who sold various opiate derivatives, including Oneirine, who Tchitcherine was accused of doing business with (3.5).
This calls to mind Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, where the women at the party are not underage on the film, but are meant to represent those who are. Eyes Wide Shut is highly worth seeing if you haven’t. And though it probably isn’t, it heavily seems inspired by the Anubis chapter.
The beginning of this episode made me think of Heart of Darkness