Part 3 - Chapter 32: Last Days in Wonderland
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3 - Chapter 32: Tchitcherine at the Luneberg Heath, the Anarchists' Movie Set, New Towns in the Zone, Mossmoon and Scammony
Tchitcherine has arrived at the Luneberg Heath, which, as we have learned, is the location which Blicero (Lieutenant Weissmann) had originally launched the 00000 rocket from. He has traced Blicero’s path across the Zone in the same way he traced the location of the Kirghiz Light more than a decade past. And when here, now viewing the Heath from above, just as he had seen the ‘ajtys’ in their singing duel in a Kyrgyzstani village (3.5), he now “sees two men, one white, one black, holding guitars” (610). He ponders on how this approach plays a parallel with “his own approach to the Kirghiz Light,” (611) a phenomenon which should have been awe inspiring — instilling levels of both wonder and terror — and yet did not affect him at all. Could he now be approaching a revelation or a marvel which would similarly leave him unaffected? A Zonal version to his once pre-Zone experience?
Tchitcherine knows that Enzian must be close given he, too, was searching for the Schwarzgerät within the 00000. But despite his goal being to find Enzian for as long as we’ve known him, he finds himself utterly paranoid and terrified of moving forward. We saw his paranoia peak (3.27) when he was unaware of who the Soviet intelligence man who had met Marvy outside the Schwarzkommando camp was (Slothrop in Tchitcherine’s Soviet uniform). And while that still worries him, there is more: Slothrop had tipped off the Schwarzkommando that Marvy and Co. were planning a raid, leading them to save themselves (3.26). And then Marvy himself had recently gone missing (3.31). To Tchitcherine, this signals that some entity was growing, what he deems a Counterforce: a potentially revolutionary force acting against the growing Elite forces within the Zone (and since the Zone has been spreading, also working within the entire World).
Interestingly, despite Tchitcherine being worried about a Counterforce, he also is not a part of the Rocket-cartel which “He’s been trying hard not to believe too much in” (611). This Rocket-cartel is the skeleton and brain which has structured and run the Zone itself — i.e. all that Slothrop has discovered on his journey ranging from his own conditioning by Jamf to the various industries and organizations (IG Farben, etc.) built to profit on war, from the slave labor used to build the rocket to the compartmentalization of engineers and scientists working to design it, from the trinket/plastic market which would evolve out of the war to the hidden market which the violence of war would help distract from, and so on. It is a wide ranging ‘industry’ that utilizes the rocket and other oil/plastic-based products to maintain the Elite status of those within that class, all the while suppressing and enslaving the lower classes by causing an in-fighting and a never-ending War State. Tchitcherine believes that von Göll is in on the Cartel, which would make sense given he has been used to represent the artists who have helped move Their goals forward1 and has acted as one of Their black marketeers. But even more recently, he has evolved to become an ‘octopus,’ with his far-reaching grasp entangling the black market with the legal market, and the Zone with the outer world.
We learn then that Tchitcherine was about to head back to Moscow well before he had even met Marvy for the Schwarzkommando raid — likely because he had lost Slothrop’s, and thus Enzian’s, trail. He had planned to leave because a man named Mravenko who worked for VIAM2 instilled the initial bits of paranoia within him which are likely what caused his epiphany and his crisis (in 3.27) in the first place. But once Tchitcherine learned that Blicero’s travels ended at the Luneberg Heath, he knew this is where he could eventually find Enzian.
Back to Tchitcherine at the Heath. It turns out that the group he is seeing from afar is the Argentinian Anarchists waiting for Gerhardt von Göll to arrive to film the Martín Fierro film that they had planned on creating back on the U-boat (3.8: after Squalidozzi found von Göll in the harmonica factory which was also after he left Zürich where he met Slothrop). The film was going to be about Fierro’s life which, to quickly re-summarize (though you could go back to my 3.8 post for a slightly more in-depth summary), was about a Gaucho in Argentina who refused to join General Roca’s planned genocide of the Natives, but who later, in Part 2 of the story, did end up assimilating3. Down on the Heath, Tchitcherine saw El Ñato (the Anarchist who spoke in Gaucho slang) and Felipe (the Anarchist who romanticized the Gauchos and who thus adored El Ñato). The two were currently together while Felipe conducted "his noontime devotionals to the living presence of a certain rock back in the wasteland of La Rioja" (612) — a rock which had historic and symbolic significance to the cause of the Argentinians and the Anarchists themselves. Felipe believed that the rock had a consciousness and memory just as we do. He believes in the significance of place and land, and in how humanity’s typical view of what constitutes something as alive is a narrow-minded approach to being a part of this Earth. Viewing things as simple as stones as unimportant, to him, could lead to the disregard for the land and country itself.
Another member of the Anarchists, Graciela Imago Portales, who had worked for certain Leftist organizations back in Argentina before and during the Perón regime, played with cards while pondering her sexual relationship with the other Anarchist, Beláustegui (the positivist of the group), and her hope in the deterioration of money’s value. This pairing of Portales and Beláustegui is meant to show the disparate nature of participants in a desired revolution. While Portales was a long time Leftist and one who saw a more spiritual or God-like nature in the workings of the world and its people, Beláustegui possessed his ‘positivism’ which led him to only see things through the lens of logic within the present moment. Their relationship shows that two people of completely different world views can come together to share this common goal, whatever their views of ‘chance’ within their goal may be.
They had put up the entire movie set while they were waiting for von Göll, and the set had become like a small town built upon the launching site of the 00000. Other towns, too, have been erected out of the now ‘peaceful burial ground’ of the Zone. Each one is built for or by some displaced group who had struggled within the Zone when things were not as quiet: one "dedicated now to a single industry, mail delivery," (614) and one out of the dogs who were trained to kill and who were subsequently left behind. The former, the mail service town, is possibly just a reference to The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). But more interestingly, it could be a possible place of revival/invigoration of Tristero. And even more interestingly, it could be (since W.A.S.T.E., which would grow out of Tristero, is an allegory for the internet and the surveillance state) a symbol for the coming surveillance age being built out of control structures developed during WWII.4 The latter, the town of dogs, allegorizes the soldiers or people who were also ‘left behind.’ With war, killing, and all that comes with it, being so deeply driven into the minds of the people, there is very little thought of life without those occurrences that had happened daily for so long now. And while the people may have had an analog to those dogs’ trainers "from whom came nourishment, kind scratches and strokings," (614) most of that comfort that existed from times past has now been eradicated. Finally, the Anarchist’s town itself symbolized the antiestablishment groups now set to waiting. The Zone has worked its magic, become a world, and those actively fighting against it now sit and wait for a chance that may never come.
The solution to the dog village problem leads us to once again hear of Pointsman "who is now restricted to one small office at Twelfth House," (615) this place being a London location where we had heard that the remnants of the White Visitation were sent to after its post-Slothrop dismantling (2.8). Pointsman continues to lose any sort of respect or admiration he may once have had, this time because it has been discovered that the man who ended up being castrated because of him was not Slothrop like it should have been, but Major Marvy.
Two men (narratively moving far away from the Heath) discuss the downfall of Pointsman: Sir Marcus Scammony — a man we have not met before — and Clive Mossmoon — husband of Scorpia Mossmoon (the woman who Pirate Prentice once loved and lusted after) and employee of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI: a subsidiary of IG Farben). Mossmoon seems genuinely concerned about the fallout of Pointsman and all that has happened surrounding his fallout. But Scammony, an incredibly stereotypically gay figure, does not have the least bit of worry in the world, because while They may have sent out Slothrop for a specific purpose which ended up failing, Scammony wonders "What harm can he cause, roaming around Germany? […] Slothrop was a good try at a moderate solution, but in the end it’s always the Army, isn’t it?" (615). So, it seems like Their plan was (partially) for Slothrop, who after his ‘training’ would seek out the Schwarzgerät, to lead certain entities such as Tchitcherine, Marvy, and others, to the Schwarzkommando who would also be searching for this item. This would thus lead to the eradication of the supposed ‘threat’ that the Schwarzkommando posed over the Western capitalist bloc. And Scammony is unfazed that the plan would likely fail, because everything would always even itself out for those who hold the power.
The final musing is of a time when men loved one another, fought for one another, where hope could be found in even the "mud, shit, [and] the decaying pieces of human meat" (616) that were present in the trenches of the First World War. But that has been stripped from us by men like Scammony: men who held high places of power and showed no concern for the death of a civilization or a people, who didn’t even let those ideas cross their mind. The stereotypically gay Scammony interestingly is not thought of negatively by his 1940s peers for his flamboyant and highly sexualized demeanor. He flirts with Mossmoon who either doesn’t mind it or to some extent even welcomes it; he holds orgies and BDSM parties at his estate which many attend; he even dresses as his alter ego, ‘Angelique.’ This presented demeanor is not, like many readers may think, a homophobic attack on gay men in power or in general. It is a representation of the surface level view of many men in power, and how the world has now accepted that anyone, even those who once would have been shunned from the public eye, can become an Elite if they are willing to act the right way and work for the right people: "Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal afterthought now, and the real and only fucking is done on paper" (616). The men at the helm of the ship can be (or present themselves to be) any manner of person, class, race, sexuality, or story, because likely we will never even see their face or hear their voice. What matters is, when they come to power, that they are willing to sign away the lives of whoever They deem a threat; that they are willing to strip away the possibility of love between those in war or peace; that they abide by Their definition of right and wrong, good and evil.
Up Next: Part 4 — Title and Epigraph
We have made it to the end of Part 3!
Next week is going to serve as a bit of a break since we will only be analyzing the Title of Part 4 and the brief epigraph (though I’ll also touch on the epigraph that was present in the original manuscript). The break will be nice though because as we get into Part 4, some difficult analyses are coming… It is well known to be the most complex section of the book and there really is no debating that. But it is, in my opinion, the best of them.
I’ve been reading a lot of Roberto Bolaño lately and this has been an idea he’s incredible at exploring. Most of his novels explore that concept and the ones I’d recommend looking into would be, in order of publication, Nazi Literature in the Americas, Distant Star, The Savage Detectives (though this one kind of explores the opposite side where literature can oppose a fascist state), By Night in Chile, and 2666. My favorite of those is 2666 though the one best at exploring this idea would likely be Distant Star.
VIAM was one of those agencies tasked with gathering rocket ordnance (along with TsAGI and NISO) which we had learned about back in 2.8 (pg. 273) while Pointsman was having his crisis on the beach (after he lost Slothrop and after the White Visitation began falling apart).
The Anarchists did not want to film Part 2 because it went against their goals of departing from the fascist regimes which were taking over Argentina and the world.
All of this likely only makes sense if you’ve read The Crying of Lot 49, so sorry if you haven’t (but you should).