Gravity's Rainbow - Part 3 - Chapter 31.1: All-American Archetypes

Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 31.1: Muffage and Spontoon, General Wivern at the Alcohol Dump, Krypton Finds Slothrop, the Runcible Spoon Fights, Bodine Saves Slothrop

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It is August 5, 1945. The day before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Doctors Muffage and Spontoon — two British medical officers (M.O.s) who have been selected by Pointsman to track down Slothrop and perform a currently unstated operation on him — are walking through Cuxhaven (the destination which Slothrop has been traveling to for some time now and which he has finally reached). They are in the Krupp works, Krupp being a weapons manufacturer during WWII which, like Siemens and the Mittelwerke, utilized concentration camp slave labor to produce weapons. Here in Cuxhaven, the M.O.s question a corporal about whether he has been in contact with Slothrop. We learn that he has been in and out of the offices, likely attempting what he had been heading toward Cuxhaven for in the first place: to procure his false honorable discharge paperwork which he asked von Göll to send to Cuxhaven after they obtained the package on the Anubis (3.22). This all means that some time has passed since we had last seen Slothrop at Zwölfkinder listening to Franz Pökler’s story about when he was a student of Laszlo Jamf’s (3.28). Muffage and Spontoon also learn that Slothrop is in his pig suit, still dressed as, though they don’t know this term, the Plechazunga.

Slothrop is not the only man the two M.O.s are looking for. They also ask about one General Wivern, a SHAEF technical staffer and one of the men who was at the Casino Hermann Goering while Slothrop was. Wivern is a forgotten character since he was only ever mentioned a couple times without much seeming importance. He was at the Casino at least as early as when Stephen Dodson-Truck made his way on site (but likely earlier) which we know because we first saw Wivern commenting on Slothrop’s attempt at growing a mustache around this point: "‘It’s disgusting,’ sez Wivern. ‘Next time I come round I shall bring you some wax for it’" (2.3, pp. 210-211). After Katje and many of the others who were initially sent there with Slothrop leave the Casino, and as "a new regime has been taking over[,] General Wivern’s is now the only familiar face" (2.5, pg. 237). The ‘regime’ changed partially because of Mucker-Maffick’s revelation to Slothrop in the bathroom stalls about how he believed this entire Casino adventure was a set-up (2.2, pg. 192) and because of Stephen Dodson-Truck’s own break down on the beach, telling Slothrop that "‘My ‘function’ is to observe you. That’s my function’" (2.3, pg. 216). Mucker-Maffick and Dodson-Truck were hired by Pointsman to keep an eye on Slothrop and push the conspiracy forward, but they could not hold to the plan because of the guilt. However, General Wivern, though it was never directly stated he was bought by Pointsman, was one of the few constants at the Casino with Slothrop from the beginning, never even giving a hint that he was a part of the same group. So, after the regime changed and the IG man, Hilary Bounce, was providing Slothrop with an abundance of documentation on German missile systems and the V-2, Slothrop discovered "a blueprint of a German parts list" (2.5, pg. 242) which had the first mention that he (and we) saw of an ‘insulation device’ within a specific A4/V-2 Rocket — what would soon be discovered to be the Schwarzgerät. This led Slothrop to ask General Wivern for the Document SG-1 that was also mentioned on the blueprint, but Wivern only responded with, "‘Slothrop, there are no ‘SG’ documents,’" (2.5, pg. 242) leading Slothrop to become paranoid that some specific fact about the missile systems which he was learning about was being hidden from him. He also saw, on the same document, that the mentioned insulation device was made out of Imipolex-G. All of this was leading to, "well not an obsession really . . . [at least] not yet" (2.5, pg. 242). This whole overview is to say that Wivern was one of the major forces at play at the Casino Hermann Goering, hired by Pointsman, who purposefully led Slothrop to discover the existence of a ‘insulation device’ within a V-2 by providing Hilary Bounce with the specific documents he wanted Slothrop to read over, ultimately lying very obviously to Slothrop about the existence of a document that Slothrop was ‘not supposed to know about.’ This series of events organized by Wivern is partially what led Slothrop to become further paranoid and to leave the Casino to begin his holy grail-like quest for the Schwarzgerät in the first place.¹ And now Wivern is here, in Cuxhaven, the same city as Slothrop all these months later. Is this coincidence? And if not, how long has he been tailing or searching for Slothrop? We do know that Pointsman had lost track of Slothrop after Zürich (2.8), so Wivern was likely not tailing Slothrop from the beginning, but nonetheless, they have at least been ‘together’ for some time.

The man at the Krupp works tells Muffage and Spontoon that Wivern is at the alcohol dump, a place mostly meant to store alcohol used for rocket manufacturing, but which is also now used for general consumption. When the M.O.s arrive, there is a massive drunken dance which seems choreographed as the songs go on and men and women spread out into a ‘rose-pattern.’ At the alcohol dump, but not participating in the dance, is Seaman ‘Pig’ Bodine of the vessel U.S.S. John E. Badass. Bodine was first seen with Säure Bummer in the basement back in Berlin, telling Slothrop that he would pay him ‘a million German Reichsmarks’ if Slothrop would fetch the six kilos of hashish from Potsdam (3.6). But after Slothrop returned with the hashish, Bodine and the printing press he was going to use to print the money were nowhere to be found (3.10). We did briefly see Bodine’s vessel pass by the Argentinian Anarchist’s submarine, both of them seeing each other in space but not in time due to the Oneirine that Bodine spiked the coffee with (3.8).

Now, in Cuxhaven, he is continuing with his semi-black-market function of utilizing the war to accumulate drugs, this time getting ‘bhang’ (weed) from the CBI theatre (Chinese-Burmese-India warfront). The difference between Bodine and the western capitalist states is that he is exploiting these drug trafficking rings (which have purposefully been built into the war state) not to redistribute them to cause harm like They eventually would start doing, but for seemingly recreational purposes and to make a quick buck for himself. Similarly, he is a well-known host of the Zonal ‘runcible spoon fights’ also used to make him money based on gambling for the winner of said fights. So, first, the minor recreational drug trafficking that Bodine commits is comparable to the larger scale drug trafficking that the US will soon participate in. And therefore, the ‘runcible spoon fights’ are also comparable to a coming US trend. For Bodine, he uses them to make quick money through recreational means, but the US will soon be fabricating conflict (or reasons for conflict) abroad in order to increase profits for their own military industrial manufacturers. In conclusion, Bodine lives within the context of a certain historical era and mimics how the future ‘powers that be’ will utilize the outcome of that era in order to achieve specific goals — drug trafficking and proxy war for profit. This is not to say that Bodine to any extent is evil or an accomplice in this analogy, just that he is a humorous foreteller of a coming age and one who has developed a talent for making the best use of the inevitable coming world for his individual gain.²

In order to acquire another drug that has become famous here in the Zone, Bodine sends Corpsman Krypton to one of his pharmacist connections. Once here, Krypton comes across Slothrop still dressed as the Plechazunga. When he makes mention of Bodine, Slothrop asks him to tell Bodine, "‘Rocketman sez howdy’" (596). It turns out, as Krypton muses, that Slothrop’s retrieval of the hashish in Potsdam has become legend in the Zone. Slothrop is thus being foreshadowed to become the Zone itself. His stories, histories, adventures, and doings are now being told as folklore, as if he is the progenitor of a coming age.

The coincidences stretch further when the military police break into the pharmacy searching for Slothrop. Since it does not seem like anyone really knew Slothrop was here before — and since both Muffage and Spontoon came to Cuxhaven despite Pointsman having lost Slothrop — the likelihood is that von Göll, being one of the few people who knew Slothrop was traveling to this city, sold him out.

When Krypton helps Slothrop escape, he sings "‘follow the yellow-brick road,’" (597) a callback to The Wizard of Oz which was where the epigraph of Part 3 came from. The epigraph, "Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. . . .," (279) specifically led us into the Zone. Now that we have entered ‘Oz’ and Slothrop has continued to ‘scatter,’ the Zone has started to transform into our own reality. It no longer simply ‘appears’ that we are not in the real world, but we are acting on the fact that we now exist within something we once thought to be impossible. What we will be witnessing within the last two chapters of Part 3 is the Zone no longer being the blank canvas upon which the world will be rewritten, but the Zone simply becoming the World itself.

Slothrop and Krypton arrive at the pier where the U.S.S. John E. Badass is docked, and the runcible spoon fight is on its way. Attendees who are watching this fight "are not exactly sure what’s going on. Some think that Purfle and Bladdery [the fighters] are really mad at each other. Others feel that it is meant to be comedy" (597). Knowing that Bodine represents a satirical version of the coming American age where the purpose behind battles or wars are fabricated for profit, we can see that the audience represents the average civilian population during this time who cannot decipher if these wars have a real basis in conflict or are ‘meant to be comedy’ (i.e. so absurd that they cannot be real). It is not only the watchers who are uncertain of the war’s reality, but even the armies who are uncertain, for when Bladdery holds the ‘knife-edge’ up to Purfle’s neck, "ready to slice in," they both look toward Bodine, the man who started and who controls this war, wondering if they really should "fight to the finish," and "fill their common world with death" (598). Bodine is too busy counting his money to notice.

Krypton informs Bodine that Rocketman is here, and Bodine initially does not believe him. But when the military police arrive, the two go to retrieve Slothrop and Bodine realizes that it really is him. Slothrop asks for a ride to Putzi’s, the location where he knows von Göll will be at and where he will hopefully find out what is going on with the honorable discharge paperwork he was promised. When they are about to escape the MPs, Muffage and Spontoon also arrive on scene and spot the man in the pig uniform who they’ve been looking for. Bodine and Krypton grab Slothrop and hijack a Red Cross vehicle to escape with. Driving this vehicle is Shirley, a Red Cross employee who immediately condemns and is terrified of the hijackers, not because they commandeered her vehicle, but because they have drugs on them. The men call out her hypocrisy given she is condemning them for recreational drug use when the supposedly charitable, humanitarian organization that she works for actually charged soldiers money in order to receive food during the Battle of the Bulge. The disparity here is the individual profiting off of drug sales for oneself versus the participation in a system that profits off a people as a whole. This is a metacommentary of Gravity’s Rainbow itself, where Bodine represents the satirical critique that the novel is conducting (along with some striving for individual gain) and Shirley represents reality attempting to shun this crude representation of the world all while participating in exactly what is being critiqued. But when she is called out for her hypocrisy, she sheds her strait-laced disguise and begins participating in the more animalistic satire, possibly thus representing a reader who is able to take this critique and better understand the facets of the world which are being satirized.

In the end, the vehicle drives onward toward Putzi’s so he can meet up with der Springer and see what’s up with his missing paperwork. He and Bodine chat, revealing that Slothrop is not only losing himself during his ‘scattering,’ but his history and family as well. For, he "‘Can’t think of a soul’" (602) who he would want Bodine to talk to, not even his own mother, if he was caught by the military police or the medical officers who are now tailing him.

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Up Next: Part 3, Chapter 31.2 (finishing up Chapter 31)

1. This partially ties back to the previous chapter where someone like Lyle Bland helped orchestrate the minor and major players which would lead to Their intended and desired outcome of the war (3.30).

2. I’m mostly forgetting how Bodine’s stories occur in Pynchon’s other novels that include him. But I’m curious to see if this symbolic trend continues when I write about those ones.