Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 21: Power Sources and Distribution Networks

Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 21: Enzian, Christian, and Andreas Look for Maria, Jamf Ölfabriken Werke AG and Enzian's Epiphany, Finding Pavel, Thoughts of a Search Beyond the Rocket

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Enzian, Andreas, and Christian, last seen interrogating Horst Achtfaden in regard to the Schwarzgerät (3.13), are now travelling through Hamburg. They been searching hopelessly for the Empty Ones — the Otukungurua — and their most recent exploits. Recall that the Empty Ones/Otukungurua were the subgroup of Zone Herero who were with the rest of them in the Nordhausen mountains. The Empty Ones’ leader was Josef Ombindi whereas Enzian was the leader of the group as a whole. While they were all a part of the same group — the Erdschweinhöhle/Zone Herero/Schwarzkommando — the Empty Ones differentiated themselves from the rest in that they believed in mass suicide of the Herero people as a form of retribution, possibly spiritual and mystical retribution, against those who had wronged them.

But they were not only looking for this subgroup, they were looking for Christian’s sister, Maria, and her husband, Pavel, as well. For Christian, not a part of this Empty One group, believed in the propagation and life of the Herero people. But Ombindi and his group had found the couple, knowing Maria was pregnant, and like they did with various other expecting Herero parents, convinced them to abort the child against their will.

Maria is first of all an allusion to the Mary Magdalene, meaning her child would have been analogous to Jesus — or at least some savior figure. Her abortion — and Christian, Enzian, and Andreas’ attempt to stop it — is not, as many readers would unfortunately assume, a form of anti-abortion/pro-life commentary. Instead, it is a commentary on eugenics instilled within a people. It is similar to the modern world in which figures such as Bill Gates help fund the sterilization (with supposedly ‘good intentions’) of the African people under the guise of a contraception helping them control their impoverished continent, prevent disease, and an allowance for them live a little better. But in reality, it is exactly what it sounds like — pure, unabashed eugenics. The slaughter of a people. And here we see it taken to the level of suicide where a group within this people has taken the white man’s dream and is pushing it forward themselves. Given Maria and her child are analogous to the Virgin Mary and Jesus, this genocide and suicide are depriving and stripping the Herero’s (and any group undergoing the same atrocity) from any hope of salvation. And ironically, “Washing-blue is the abortifacient of choice,” (519) washing-blue being a dye created by IG Farben themselves, showing that the West’s and the white man’s desire had, in fact, influenced the Empty Ones to desire and push forward the suicide of their people through the assistance of progressive technologies and synthetics. Ombindi, then, is our Herod figure.

The three ride onward on their motorcycles, Enzian observing the surrounding landscapes which have been altered because of the war and the bombing that had occurred. They rode to the “ex-refinery, Jamf Ölfabriken Werke AG,” (520) a synthetic oil and plastic plant run by the late Laszlo Jamf. We already know that Jamf was the creator of Imipolex G and the scientist who first used it in experiments on young Tyrone Slothrop. This plant may have been the place in which the plastic was originally created, and now it lay destroyed, reduced to non-functional parts, by the bombings. However, Enzian ponders if this were all a part of the plan from the beginning. For instance, many acts of destruction have led to a more ‘functional industry’ for Them. Take an act of war: Pearl Harbor — an act of destruction which led to America’s introduction into the war and allowed us to achieve numerous goals from the display of the atomic bomb, the drawing of the Nazi scientists into the country, and numerous other geopolitical gains. Or, though Pynchon would not have known this yet, the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 leading to everything the ruling class could ever have hoped for. The destruction of Jamf’s factory is similar: taking something that had already created forms of destruction around the world, and now, bombed out by the other ‘side’ (though in terms of ruling classes, there are no true ‘sides,’ just purportedly opposing forces who, in actuality, work together to achieve their similar goals) could so easily be reworked into a far more powerful, and now justified, force of evil. No one who built these structures — few, even, who worked within them — knew they had a purpose beyond their original design. But all structures, industries, corporations, and so on, serve ulterior motives. Their deaths are not necessarily always intended (though often they are), but if their death means more profit, gain, or power, then by God, bombs away.

All of this predestination means that “this War was never political at all” (521). There are no Republicans and Democrats, no intranational or international parties working truly against one another once we delve beyond the pure surface level. There are, of course, social aims that may differ, or even — very occasionally — some economic ones. But in reality, the goal on all sides is to maintain the existence and authority of the ruling class. Enzian himself contemplates if they are only fighting for technology — or, even, if technology itself is deciding on the path forward. And this is true to some extent, for “Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs” (521) do hold incredible amounts of influence and power. But they are owned and controlled by the Elite — the true bearers of this unfaltering mantle. The Elite are a part of every ‘political’ party within America or outside of it. There is no real fighting between them, but a fictional one meant to distract the populace just as the violence in war is meant to distract from “the real business of the War,” that being “buying and selling” (1.14, pg. 105). And technology is both a byproduct and an object of capital that they use to push these means forward. But we must look past the most obvious answers: that being, one example for instance, that it is technology itself causing all of this (or, in other realms, that wars occur because of a single assassination, that the police are brutally reacting to a riot purely out of fear, that health care is tied to employment in order to negate any laziness someone may have, and on and on). No, these are never the answers. Instead:

“We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid . . . we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function . . . zeroing in on what incalculable plot?”

(521)

While we are often taught by these teachers (whether it be purposeful or because of a lack of their own desire to make these ‘connections’) that the answer is available by simply looking on the surface of things, we must look beyond. Find where the source of power originates from: the wars that are occurring may have ‘started’ for a stated reason, but find where the weapons are being transferred, what resources are being extracted, and where the profit is landing; the police may be reacting to a protest but look at whose property and wealth they are protecting. Similarly, technology may necessitate further progress of technology and science, but where is technology’s distribution? Who is gaining the wealth and power because of its sale, its use, its development? Therefore, the destruction of this plant — the Jamf Ölfabriken Werke AG — and many others like it — “the Krupp works in Essen,” “Blohn & Voss right here in Hamburg or another make-believe ‘ruin,’ in another city[,] another country” (521) — was not unintentional. It was planned. But why? Because the product had already been created, distributed, profited on. And the power had been gained. Its, and their, destruction would necessitate more progress: the creation and construction of further plants with new goals that ‘we have never seen before.’ For technology did not grant itself the holiness and flesh that it has recently been given — humanity did.

None of this paranoia that Enzian is experiencing (though, like Slothrop, it isn’t really paranoia as much as it is a realization of how the world really works and the form of insanity that follows) isn’t much helped by the fact that he, since we first met him, is constantly popping amphetamines — Pervitins. These drugs have been causing him to dissociate from himself, and worse, to desire to flee from his companions. The entirety of the Zone Herero project has been a sort of reclamation of their identity, so his desire to run is an almost complete disassociation with any goals they may have had. This drug was made at the Oneirine plant, another drug produced by, you guessed it, Laszlo Jamf. And on top of this dissociation which likely was intentional to some degree, imposed by Them, the man the group is seeking, Maria’s husband, Pavel, is also mid-hallucination brought on by sniffing Leunagasolin, a product synthesized by a branch of IG Farben (who Jamf initially produced Imipolex G for). These hallucinations involving what sound like comic book monsters and villains had led Pavel himself to disassociate from his own goals — and the goals of his people — as well. He had wanted to be a father, wanted to raise a child with Maria, wanted to achieve the betterment of his oppressed people, and yet these drugs had led him down the path of Ombindi and the Empty Ones’ goals. He did not necessarily desire and bring on the abortion of his child, but he has done nothing to stop it — perhaps even bought into the goal of tribal suicide enough to allow it to happen.

As they approach Pavel, Enzian also realizes that there are more industries than one which are causing all of the hellish rewriting of the Zone. Yes, we can see IG Farben and Laszlo Jamf creating these innumerable synthetic plastics and mind-altering, anaesthetizing drugs, but what if whatever is causing this is not IG Farben? Is not the Rocket? Or, at least, not only these entities? Would we have to look at “the Volkswagen factory, the pharmaceutical companies,” (524) or other various industries? And if the answers did not land in Germany, which nations would we have to analyze next? Does this realization then mean that the Zone Hereros’ search for the Rocket was itself a farce? That it is not only the Rocket they should be searching for — the source from which every distribution network will lead back to, and which will allow every source of power to swell? And can he use the pain that his people had experienced, are even still experiencing in the case of those like Christian and Maria, to push them on toward this new and far grander search? These questions all flow through Enzian’s head because he knows that “Somewhere, among the wastes of the World, is the key that will bring us back, restore us to our Earth and to our freedom” (525). It is worth the pain — both physical and mental — and any lost friendships of loves we may have along the way. It hopefully will not come to either, but a reclamation of the Earth is something worth suffering for.

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Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 22