Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 26: America, Meet Your Future
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 26: Slothrop and Marvy Again, Clayton 'Bloody' Chiclitz, Out to the A4 Battery, Slothrop Warns the Schwarzkommando
As Slothrop, Ludwig, and the girl with the furs come upon Major Duane Marvy, Slothrop fears that he has been caught. He had last seen the Major during the hot air balloon pie fight (3.4) after which Slothrop either presumed him dead or presumed that he was never to be seen again. And though he is proven wrong here, Marvy does not recognize Slothrop given he is in Tchitcherine’s Soviet Union military uniform. At the historical moment during WWII they are in, the Americans and Soviets were still allies, not yet archrivals as they would soon be after the bomb was dropped in Japan and when the Cold War began. As is now known, much (if not all) of America’s alliance with the Soviet Union was purely out of necessity in the war and for personal gain, not out of any type of true altruism, loyalty, or desire. Many of the higher ups within America would have been aware that once the Soviet Union’s necessity was utilized, they would become enemy number one for a variety of reasons. Firstly, due to them being one of the largest world powers who would subsequently develop an atomic bomb of their own. And secondly, due to the Red Scare and the purported ‘threat’ of communism that the Soviet Union effused. Thus, as we see Marvy doing to Slothrop, America is putting on the artificial face of hospitality and generosity to maintain their alliance as the War winds down.
Marvy (who currently knows about the events regarding Slothrop, Tchitcherine, der Springer, and co. at Peenemünde) is accompanied by one Clayton ‘Bloody’ Chiclitz, the eventual president of Yoyodyne, an aerospace manufacturer which would soon be a mass producer of military weapons that it would readily sell to the U.S. military.1 Previous to this scene and likely to the events of the novel, Chiclitz owned a toy factory which produced horribly racist toys for the children of America to play with. He then joined the various forces within the Zone who were searching for V-related weapons technology to bring back to America where he would finally open up Yoyodyne itself to produce weapons of a similar sort. Since he is here with the stereotypical jingoist American, Marvy, and with the representation of America itself or the average American themself, Slothrop, we can track Chiclitz as yet another archetype of America. Chiclitz here represents the coming American system — America’s, or the capitalist world’s, future. He shows the elevation from a capitalist profiteer who contributed to the ingrained prejudice and hate within America, to one who utilized these now ingrained prejudices to justify the sale of arms in the eyes of the people, thus allowing his profits to skyrocket even more. Here, in pre-Yoyodyne Germany, he is currently perfecting those methods of furthering the increase of profits through the exploitation of the innocent and the impoverished via labor and the world’s perverse sexual desire of those more innocent groups, here represented by a group of children in need of money and food.2
The group, before going out to scout “the remains of an A4 battery,” (559) partake in Major Marvy’s overly spicy chili and then drunkenly drive over to the site, showing that gluttony, a touch of masochism, and some humanitarian neglect are just a few of the things that drive America’s archetypes forward.
When they arrive, the site has been excavated by the Russians. Here, Slothrop finds “The Schwarzkommando mandala: KEZVH” (560) — the same one that Slothrop saw in Nordhausen the last time he saw Enzian (3.6, pg. 361).3 The mandala was a symbol of reclamation for the Herero people given it was worn by them as a religious or spiritual symbol despite the fact that it was modeled after an insignia that the Germans wore when they initially invaded Südwest Africa in the very early 20th-century, as well as using the letters that represent the phases of the V-2 rocket which has been used to commit similar atrocities in Europe. The insignia leads both Marvy and Slothrop to a different realization; Marvy sees that Slothrop recognizes the mandala and does not have an insignia himself, and Slothrop realizes that Marvy and Chiclitz may be here to once again press an attack on the Schwarzkommando. In order to assure Marvy that he is here for what Marvy would consider the ‘right reasons,’ Slothrop states that he is only gathering intelligence to help attack the Schwarzkommando. Whether consciously doing so or not, this convinces Marvy to give Slothrop the coordinates of where the Schwarzkommando are currently hiding.
They drop him off in town, and Slothrop begins walking to where the Schwarzkommando are supposed to be. As he walks, his dissolving and scattering mind, body, and spirit recoalesce for a moment — pieces reforming to what they once were by some neuronal connection between the present moment and something passed — when he recalls (or at least deems important once again) the mission to find the Schwartzgerät and to find the reason for the connection between him, Jamf, and Imipolex G. But then this remembrance shows itself as a mere component or bug of the scattering, being a piece of Slothrop’s once fully formed conscious now flickering back, yet in a more chaotic fashion with vociferously sung lyrics, rapidly merged words, random inflections and stops, and intermissions of Slothrop’s self-persuasion, all professing the difficulty of said quest. Yes, it may be a call-back and reconnection to his original quest, but it is as if someone were bending the antennas, attempting but failing to return the original signal.
As his mind begins to somewhat return to what it was at the beginning of his walk, the Schwarzkommando jump out of the dark to capture him. While “Enzian isn’t there, […] Andreas Orukambe is” (562).4 Slothrop, for some reason, has the desire to save them all. It could be that he is seeking a divine forgiveness for his crimes, or more likely, because he has always had a connection with the downtrodden of the Earth. So, he tells them when Marvy, Chiclitz, and their army, plan to attack. Even though they initially do not seem phased, Slothrop turns the conversation to the Schwartzgerät, telling them the story that Greta Erdmann told him on the Anubis after he had committed his sin — the one in which she was brought by Captain Blicero to a tower to be a part of a ritual orgy while dressed in a suit of Imipolex G (3.17). They know that Blicero did end up firing the 00000 rocket with the Schwartzgerät inside, and when they ask Slothrop where he fired it from, Slothrop can only say, ‘The Heath.’
Finally, Slothrop asks Andreas what the mandala means to them, and Andreas responds with the meaning that we already know but connects it more specifically to the Herero spirit and history. The mandala’s letters represent both the stages of the rockets firing and the fins of the rocket, but also the organization and reason for organization of the Herero villages. They, upon arriving in Germany, saw the rocket not only as a means to freedom, but as a piece of the same web that they themselves are a part of. So Slothrop gives them the mandala, hoping that Enzian’s words, ‘mba-kayere,’ can provide them peace and safety from what is to come.
Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 27
Chiclitz is seen as the president of this company in both in Pynchon’s novel V. (1963) and in The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the latter of which would also give the fullest accounting of Yoyodyne where one of the major manufacturing plants would be located in San Narciso. Oedipa Maas (in The Crying of Lot 49) actually sees Chiclitz, when she enters the facility, as he leads an alma mater style fight song in praise of Yoyodyne itself (The Crying of Lot 49, Chapter 4) — and in praise of military industry in general.
This footnote is just a randomly long digression about the famous pun and how many people disregard certain aspects/scenes/parts of Pynchon’s novels because of common interpretations, misreadings, or because readers tend to believe the funnier scenes are there purely for humor and are not anything to be looked into too deeply (which they occasionally are, but most are worth delving into — or at least attempting to delve into).
The notorious pun, “‘For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can’t be rowing,’” (559) references the saying ‘Forty-million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.’ This is, as Weisenburger states, one of the most elaborately set-up puns within the novel. Though I do think many people tend to note that this entire chapter/plotline up to this point is a side plot meant to draw out this pun, which is a shame given the clear massive implications of this chapter so far. Even Weisenburger seems to say that this plot is largely meant for the pun alone:
“Note that Pynchon has fashioned an entire narrative digression about illicit trading in furs, oarsmen in boats, fur henchmen, and De Mille-all of it in order to launch this pun.”
Weisenburger, 241
While Pynchon clearly chose names/words/concepts (fur, De Mille, rowing/oars, etc.) which would allow for the pun itself to be successfully used, these same names/words/concepts could have been anything (for example, illicit trading in medication, films by John Ford, rubber tires, and so on) and the implicit meaning of the section would be the same. However, he chose those specifics because it would help derive the interpretation he was striving for while also allowing him to make a goofy pun.
In conclusion, (and again, sorry about the long digression) while Pynchon does often just want to have fun and make you laugh, it’s always worth looking into the meaning of those scenes as well.
(I should also state that I don’t necessarily know if Weisenburger intended it to sound like he meant that this scene was only for the pun, but it could be read as such and is possibly the reason that this scene is largely thought to be goofy one and nothing more).
Weisenburger, Stephen. A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel. 2nd ed., University of Georgia Press, 2006, pg. 241.
The chapter in question (3.6) shows Slothrop sick from tainted water in Berlin shortly after landing the hot air balloon which he fought Major Marvy from. While he is sick, he recalls his final meeting with Enzian which we did not actually see occur in real time, given he left Nordhausen in 3.4.
(Note: Page 361 of the novel has an illustration of the mandala).
Andreas was with Enzian and Christian back in 3.21 as they traversed the Zone looking for Christian’s sister, hoping to prevent the abortion that the Empty Ones were convincing her of.