Part 4 - Chapter 10: Slouching Toward Lüneberg
Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 4 - Chapter 10: The 00001 Rocket, Mercury Poisoning, Quantum Physics, Rocket State Cosmology, Mieczislav Omuzire, Ombindi and Enzian
Enzian and the Schwarkommando have completed their project. By scavenging the Zone for parts, similar to what TsAGI and other Allied industries were doing, they have crafted their very own V-2 Rocket: “It is the 00001, the second in its series” (724). The major difference between the Zone Herero and the intelligence networks gathering these parts is that the international networks were doing so in order to develop weapons for their own desire to wage war, whereas the Zone Herero were doing so as both as a form of revenge and of protection. It would give rise to the threat of mutually assured destruction, preventing the nations in power from eradicating the oppressed populations such as the Zone Herero and with that, many other of the Preterite around the globe — or, at least, it would give these nations pause when considering said eradication.
They are well aware, despite the 00001 being necessary to preserve themselves and mankind, of the evil nature that comes with possessing such a weapon. Enzian even envisions what it would appear like if this mutually assured destruction came about, asking, “Where will you all go? What empires, what deserts?” (725). If this destruction came about, then Test Stand VII, where the rockets were once launched, would become a ‘holy place,’ though one likely for a God of Death. And Enzian, leading twelve men posed as disciples, bears this Rocket onward like a cross.
This view of a destroyed world comes further into focus, and it is revealed that it really does not look all that different from the one we are currently living in, depending on where you look. Roads of the German cities are destroyed and workers, sweating profusely, strive to rebuild them. Soon, photographs of the Raketen-Stadt will come to be known as historical artifacts of a different age — something that certainly cannot happen again, because we learn from our historical mistakes, don’t we? The world will revert into reality, and the past will move into myth. Enzian and his disciples, too, will revert into myth and religious imagery. One can only hope that their ‘cross,’ their rocket, will retain the symbolism preventing the destruction of the world presented in those soon-to-be mythological photographs. Enzian and his disciples may act as a Biblical cautionary tale, and as long as we are lucky, the powers that be will heed its message.
Enzian begins having a vision of the circular and wave-like pattern of both the Rainbow and the Rocket. If the Rocket “Begins Infinitely Below The Earth And Goes On Infinitely Back Into The Earth,” but “it’s only the peak that we are allowed to see,” (726) this means that the entire bottom half of the Rocket’s Rainbow is hidden away. Because a true rainbow only appears hemispherical due to the Earth itself preventing us from seeing its completion as a circle. And if this circle were traced into a sine wave — infinitely rising and falling forward into time — it would appear that the Rocket will similarly be infinitely recurring throughout history, rising and falling as a screaming across the sky. And the people will always recall that “It has happened before” (1.1, pg. 3). The difference now, just like in Pirate’s first dream, is that a new Rocket has been developed and used, and that if this mutually assured destruction were ever to come about, the destruction, though commonplace knowledge, would be incomparable to all those Rockets that had come before. Because technology is expanding and becoming perfected in the art of that God of Death: a jet airplane that reached the speed of sound was once thought to be impressive, but soon we would have spaceships breaking the speed of light.
This train of thought is what is known as “Rocket state-cosmology” (726) — the merging of the religious and military-industrial realms. Our look into “quaternions and vector analysis” (726) was an attempt to explain the unexplainable phenomena in our world, an attempt to seek deeper and deeper for answers to our unsolvable questions, as if the answers were built into the very subatomic structures of our universe. Looking into these subatomic structures is similar to our natural attempt to seek progress no matter the cost. As we delve further into these areas in the name of science, we discover things that should be beyond the realm of human thought. Our treatment of science and progress via the Rocket state-cosmology as some form of ‘gnosticism,’ or as ‘Kabbalist’ thought, or as ‘Manichaean’ duality, has led to the more sinister realms of progress — past the V-1, past the V-2, progressively onward to the Cosmic Bomb. Or onward toward a Rocket with purportedly only good intentions — one that would take us to the moon and increase our sense of adventure and discovery, but that, as we had recently seen (4.9), does have its own duality in the search for some other land to colonize.
Enzian then theorizes on future ‘heretics’: men who “will each have [their] own personal Rocket” (727). These heretics will break from the cosmological mode of the era and seek their own form of progress just as Pökler, Blicero, Pointsman, von Göll, and many others had. And while some of these men had sought forms of progress directly related to the Rocket, many simply sought progress in similar realms no matter the cost.
The objectives of Enzian’s quest are laid out in abstract detail: first, “To make the run over tracks that may end abruptly at riverside or in carbonized trainyard” (727). These train tracks are the same ones which are manipulated by the various pointsmen of the world — tracks of history which are switched between and are chosen for us, for we are only the riders of the train. Enzian, however, through his development of his own Rocket (and not one of those Rockets of misled ‘progress,’ but one of protection), has sought to save “the children who [were] stowed away on the trek against all orders” (727). And just as Geli Tripping sought to find and save Tchitcherine through pagan methodology (analogous to finding means outside of the traditional system to tear down Their system), Enzian seeks “To brew tea for them from fennel, betony, Whitsun roses, sunflowers, mallow leaves,” (727) another method of using means outside the master’s toolbox. And to achieve all of this, the Zone Herero, at Enzian’s command, have hidden away the V-2 Rocket parts and are transporting them, piece by piece, “in sections—warhead, guidance, fuel and oxidizer tanks, tail section,” (728) just waiting to be reassembled when their destination was reached.
Enzian and Christian1 begin debating. Christian does not believe that any society is capable of protecting us. While the purpose of society is to shelter and feed its people, Christian wonders how the coming mass development of rockets (and thus Cosmic Bombs) will affect this purpose. He posits that the Zone Herero’s contribution to this system, through its creation of the 00001, will not, in fact, protect the people, but will contribute to society’s end. Enzian’s responds, stating that society, independent of the technology or progress that has been achieved, has never been able to protect its people. The reason being is that the societies which have been allowed to exist have all been built by the Elite — by Them. In these societies, “‘They have lied to us. They can’t keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death’” (728). It is a similar argument that we have heard many times before in this novel, where our life is given meaning due to the mindless pleasures that society can provide for us, but how that simultaneously leads to our fear of death because death would remove our ability to consume these given commodities. Therefore, society has created a world which would inevitably make us fear death, provided us with the false hope that they could save us from death, all while creating the one thing which could wipe us off the face of the Earth without the knowledge that our death was even near. Through all of this, just as Blicero said to Gottfried (4.9), They would lie and tell us They loved us, needed us.
The Herero continue onward, eventually reaching a place “where the Germans, close to the end of the War, were developing a sonic death-mirror” (728). Katje, who met up with the Herero as a part of the Counterforce’s plan to find Slothrop, is apparently still with them. They have gotten over most of their differences. While at this new location, it is revealed that Ludwig, the child who Slothrop met back after he had left Rostock (3.25), has also become one of their followers, though an invisible one. And not only that, but he has finally found Ursula, his lemming. The bringing back of their bond represents the reclamation of innocence, given Ludwig’s unabashed love for her in a world that has tried to entirely eradicate any form of unnecessary and irrational (in the eyes of the Market) love: a love that would lead a person to be willing to die for the other. If society has instilled the fear of death in us via the commercialization of life, Ludwig and Ursula have seemed to find a way around this fear through their love.
The vehicle that Enzian rides in continues onward, passing what initially seems like a Herero checkpoint, until Enzian realizes that the way in which rain stuck to the checkpoint sentry’s face was the way that “water does to black greasepaint, but not to Herero skin” (730). So, getting the driver to make a U-turn in fear that the man they passed was a spy, they come across the unconscious body of Mieczislav Omuzire, a Zone Herero who once worked alongside Enzian and Christian in Nordhausen (3.3, pg. 318). And the black faced sentry is gone. This is not the first Zone Herero they have found either: “Orutyene dead. Okandio, Ekori, Omuzire wounded, Ekori critically” (730). With plans going wrong, and a seeming trail of white men attempting to sabotage, maim, or even kill the Herero, Enzian makes the executive decision to get things moving more quickly toward the Heath. A diversionary group will head North while the main transporters of the 00001 will attempt to take the train tracks, passing by many of the Ally groups who have been attempting this sabotage. The decoy group does have hesitation though, trying to infer if they are a decoy who is purely diversionary or if they are being sent on the equivalent of a suicide mission.
Enzian knows that despite the decoys being in some danger, they all are inevitably going to be betrayed by their own or by the classes they are trying to protect. The full scale change he is trying to enact, the elevation of power he wants to give his oppressed community — none of that will be allowed to stand. Many of his own community will stand against them for it will present such massive deviance from the norm. The question will also be asked: is the sacrifice of some acceptable for the saving of the masses? And the Elite will surely stand against them as we have seen occur to the Schwarzkommando’s historical analog in the Black Panther party and general Civil Rights movements. Through his contemplation of this, Enzian also comes across the leader of the Empty Ones, Josef Ombindi. Ombindi himself has disparate views, being the man attempting to convince Christian’s sister to abort her child, not because she didn’t want it, but firstly to prevent any more life from suffering in this world, and secondly as a protest via racial suicide — this suicide largely being eugenic thought passed down to him by other entities. So, he argues momentarily with Enzian, asking if their plans really differ all that much. His teleological view is that the ends will be the same, so why not allow the Herero to be fully autonomous, fully able to make that one important choice: to live, or die, by their own hand.
They continue further, still toward the Heath, and Enzian allows the Empty Ones, whatever threat they may be, to stay. For, unlike Ombindi, Enzian has been shown to believe that life must be preserved in order to make progress. Behind them follows Ludwig and Ursula, maybe the only truly autonomous beings in the Raketen-Stadt anymore. Each faction within the Schwarzkommando desired this autonomy by various means, and other factions outside desired the same. But Ludwig, having found that one thing he unconditionally and even irrationally loved, is now at the behest of only his own will. He follows them, unseen, knowing that even if he had the opportunity to call the army down on this rebel group, he would not. He senses they have something world altering to achieve, and he wants to see it too.
Up Next: Part 4, Chapter 11
Next week is quite a short post, but the chapter itself is only a couple pages. It’ll be a breather before the monster Chapter 12 post, the final chapter of the novel. Be ready for 12k plus words for that one (sorry in advance).
Christian, again, was the man who, with Enzian and Andreas, searched for Ombindi to prevent him from convincing his (Christian’s) sister to abort her child.