Gravity's Rainbow - Part 4 - Chapter 6.1: Fragments of Our Future, Part 1

Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 4 - Chapter 6.1: Slothrop's Fragmented Mind, the Floundering Four, Attempts at Anarchy, the Nuremberg Trials, Ambassador Kennedy

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The Frame

We are now within the country. Not the countryside; not within borders; not denominationally via some citizenship or card. We are within. Or, in other words, we are seeing Slothrop’s now fragmented mind becoming a part of the country: “Unexpectedly, this country is pleasant, yes, once inside it” (674). Slothrop has fragmented entirely upon his crossroads (4.1) which officially led to the end of the ‘blank canvas’ that came out of the war. Now, that canvas is being painted upon. Throughout Part 4, so far, we have seen certain aspects that would be written upon it — the formation of the CIA and its reverence toward capitalism (4.1), stay behind networks such as Operation Gladio (4.2), the planned obsolescence of products to further profits and the brainwashing of citizens to keep their obedience to the Free Market (4.3), the oppression and destruction of revolutionary groups such as the Black Panthers (4.4), and the ‘shuffling around’ and further subjugation of the Preterite under the pretenses that ‘we simply don’t have enough resources to provide anything more’ (4.5). But here, in 4.6, we will see the internal mindscape of this New World. This chapter is literally Slothrop’s and the Nation’s very consciousness melding together. His mind is fragmented, and so we will only ever see fragments come in and out, largely contextless, but providing what the mind of the World and its population would function as within this context.

Turns out that his and our mind have a bit of an Oedipal Complex since we have the perception that our Father is attempting to kill us, likely to reclaim the full attention of our ‘mother’ — i.e. the Earth. Though, that complex is not entirely unjustified, because Slothrop’s father, Broderick, did in fact sell his son off to Jamf for experimentation. But killing is taking it a step further. The Oedipal Complex, leads the person to come to the understanding that forces are out there to take advantage of us and end our existence, while our ‘mother’ is not solely there to nurture and raise us, but also for her own, new ulterior motives.¹

This Mother Earth which we are so beholden to, which we hope will protect us from our homicidal ‘father,’ is “a giant factory-state,” also known as “the Raketen-Stadt” (674) — the same Rocket State which Tchitcherine envisioned in his epiphany (3.27) that would itself be beholden to the will and desire of the Rocket or the Machine. Our existence within this world leads us to seek something known as the Radiant Hour: the antithesis to the Evil Hour which Slothrop first discovered when with Säure Bummer (3.7) which corresponded to the time which the 00000 was launched and which, when found, showed numerous dichotomies within the world — meaning, what we are told happened versus what actually happened. A search for the Radiant Hour is a search for absolute truth — not the convoluted and momentary glimpses behind the veil, but the actual answer we seek. This ‘hour’ has been stolen away, and we have been left with only these transient windows into reality.

Implanted into the gestalt consciousness is the fact that we can individually become heroes. We have been told time and time again that, individually, or within our own insular ‘circles,’ we can save the world. In this instance, we see Slothrop assemble a group known as the Floundering Four in order to seek out and reclaim the Radiant Hour. The Floundering Four are an allusion to Marvel’s The Fantastic Four — a superhero team who could only possibly come about through the invention of the Rocket given they went on an experimental mission on a Rocket which exposed them to radiation, giving them their powers. So first of all, we have powers that could only have been received because of the invention and furtherance of Rocket-based technology. Then, as time passed, the concept of superhero comics came about, giving the public another gestalt conscious: a reliance on the military industrial complex, a belief that individuals instead of communities held enough power to save the world (and not only that, but that only a preselected and perfected category of person can be the one to save the world), that these groups — however flawed — should be given free rein to do as they desire to achieve their goals, and finally, enough distraction to prevent the people from ever doing any actual ‘saving’. Slothrop’s version of the Fantastic Four is basically the same thing: a group built out of the Raketen-Stadt and attempting to save the world by fighting evil (the ‘father’) and finding the truth — “Any wonder it’s hard to feel much confidence in these idiots as they go up against Pernicious Pop each day?” (676). The issue remains that while our Four are fighting against the ‘father,’ “there is no King” (674) — no true single person we can topple in order to invoke a revolution.

These ‘four’ rouse little inspiration in anyone who holds onto some form of sanity. The only sane form of solidarity — of seeking out that Radiant Hour as a collective — is to turn to that average person next to you and say, “Things’re fal-lin’, on their face— / Maybe we should stick together part o’ the way, and / Skies’ll be bright-er some day! / Now ev’rybody—” (677) for the only way to actually enact change is not to rely on some impossible genetically superior race born out of the Rocket, but to rely on someone right beside you: another Preterite, a group formed out of the working class.²

But, in the gestalt conscious, we simply await a savior instead of forming something ourselves. And part of these supposed ‘heroes’ have “hands that know only how to reach and grab”; they seek out these treats — “Maxwies, ’n’ big Baby Rooths” (677) — for their own individual pleasure, not caring how objectively Fascist things become as long as they are able to save the day from the Big Bad. It doesn’t matter to these ‘heroes’ if the bulbs are replaced with candles,³ or if the United Fruit Company tells us that we should absolutely, never, ever put our bananas in the refrigerator,⁴ because They need these consumables to spoil a little bit faster so we can throw them away and buy more. The parallel between United Fruit Company and IG Farben is also quite stark: the latter being a representation of the corporate controlled state in Europe and North America, the latter representing the same in South America and various other countries where we purchase our fruit from. We were able to see a number of times how IG Farben not only controlled the industry in which it existed, but also any industry related or semi-related to it, along with governments and regulating bodies both domestic and abroad. United Fruit Company did similar, having such a wide-ranging grasp that they could install puppet governments within the countries that it exploited in order to make these practices less readily punishable. All this to state that in the Raketen-Stadt, corporate control of foreign and domestic government would become far more common place — a fully realized dream of Lyle Bland.

Slothrop gets himself locked into an icebox and is saved by one of the Floundering Four, Myrtle Miraculous, and soon they go zipping across the Raketn-Stadt, observing numerous children moving across streets and over buildings, some simply acting as children while others are acting as spies, gathering intelligence that may be “valuable data for the psychological warfare effort” (679) — psychological warfare being an emerging tactic which would be utilized in the coming Cold War, heavily developed by the CIA and which would use children or individuals in lower-class settings to help improve these tactics. It is when Slothrop and Myrtle move across the Raketen-Stadt where they see that “Their struggle is not the only, or even the ultimate one. Indeed, not only are there many other struggles, but there are also spectators” (679). They witness these lower classes in arenas, scavenging for food and cooking on street sides, waiting, hungry and cold in the nighttime. The people are just trying to survive out here. Yes, some may be working for random agencies or police departments as rats, but even these are attempting to do the same thing as the others: survive. There can be no shame in contributing to the Raketen-Stadt when the State has quite literally been designed to force you to act in such a way in order to go on.

Marcel, another one of the Floundering Four, tells Slothrop to meet him in the ‘Male Transvestites’ Toilet,’ specifically with coordinates largely derived from the Kabbalist Tree of Life. While Slothrop awaits whatever message he should be receiving in this stall, we get a view of the entire establishment that he has been waiting in. It appears to be a parallel to the Roseland Ballroom. In this current establishment, Maximillian, the final member of the Floundering Four, is playing saxophone with the band, likely playing for that same group of wealthy, white fraternity members who were in the Roseland Ballroom dancing to Cherokee while Slothrop also waited in a stall, though under very different pretenses (1.10). Previously, Slothrop was losing his harmonica down the toilet while ‘Red’ (Malcolm X) came in from behind. The push from Red led Slothrop on his initial journey, discovering all that was wrong with America and the Military Industrial Complex. But now, in this new Roseland Ballroom, populated and run by so-called ‘superheroes’ instead of the cultural icons it was once run by, he waited, possibly hopelessly, for a new message.

So begins a series of episodes. Remember, each of these titled ‘episodes’ is a piece of the fragmented mind of Tyrone Slothrop, now scattered across and a part of the Raketen-Stadt, hopelessly waiting in a stall. So, each of these is technically a piece of what the Preterite mind would become in the future of the Western Capitalist Bloc.

The Low-Frequency Listener

We see Slothrop’s first conscious fragment being the desire “to get through to the Argentine anarchist U-boat” (681). Perhaps this fragment of consciousness is calling back to the Triptych Dream that Slothrop had when he returned to Greta Erdmann after getting the hashish to Säure: “This dream will not leave him” (3.12, pg. 447). In this dream, in the final moments, Slothrop saw Squalidozzi as a Neptune figure, saving the drowning woman who thus gave birth to various forms of life. While he quite possibly did not understand the purpose of this dream or scene at the time, it stayed with him. His fragmented mind now sees what needed to be done — what the dream was calling for him to do in the first place. Now, that could be pure anarchy, or it could be any form of revolutionary movement that would actively work against the ruling Elite, the Raketen-Stadt, and the Military Industrial Complex, as a whole. But whatever that movement would be, anarchy or otherwise, his individualistic search for the Schwartzgerät and self-discovery was not the means for change. (Luckily, we do have a group, The Counterforce, who made this realization and who was now working toward that goal).

The frequency which Slothrop is using to try to contact Squalidozzi and his U-boat is also picking up rumors spreading across the Raketen-Stadt, namely, about “a War Crimes Tribunal under way in Nürnburg” (681): what would come to be known as the Nuremberg Trials — a series of trials for Nazi war criminals which would attempt to sentence these men to death or prison. But why are the hints at the Nuremberg Trials on the same ‘frequency’ as Slothrop’s realization of Anarchy or revolution? Well, despite these trials being a positive event on the surface, they were a massive revelation of how those parties who were prosecuting the Nazis had no true interest in punishment. It was all a show. Out of thousands upon thousands of Nazi officers responsible for the deaths of Jews and other ‘undesirables,’ only a fraction were even tried. The initial Trial saw 24 officers tried, of which twelve were sentenced to death, seven to various lengths of imprisonment, and five set free. In subsequent trials, another total of 177 members of the Nazi party were tried, of which 24 were sentenced to death, 118 were sentenced to various prison terms, and 25 were found innocent. However, in this second set, only about half of the death sentences would come to fruition, and a number of life imprisonments would be pardoned over time. Now, not only are the numbers who were even prosecuted completely paltry, but the numbers set free despite abundant evidence was horrendous. Nazi Officers such as Friedrich Flick were actually convicted of horrible crimes but ended up not being executed and going off to become one of the wealthiest men in the world. Others who were found guilty of war crimes, use of child labor, association and planning with Hitler, unlawful torture, and so on, were set free or were pardoned before their execution or the end of their prison sentence. And none of this even begins looking at “the undenazified Nazis still wandering around” (681) such as those who were forgiven as long as they gave us the scientific data they gathered during the war,⁵ or others who simply were allowed to flee to other countries like Argentina.

So, Slothrop’s crossover of the desire for revolution and his knowledge of the coming Nuremberg trials shows how part of the world’s coming consciousness will be the realization that these bureaucratic and ostensibly judicial practices will not be in place to achieve anything nearing justice. They are there to appease our own sense of justice while, in reality, achieving almost nothing meaningful, or anything resembling change. The only true path toward change is to overthrow the system itself.

Mom Slothrop’s Letter to Ambassador Kennedy

On the surface here, we see Slothrop’s mother Nalline, writing to Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy (father of JFK), asking him for any information he may have on her son, Tyrone Slothrop, since he has not been heard from for a while.⁶ She also comments on a number of events relating to the Ambassador’s life. This itself could be enough analysis since we are seeing more connections between Harvard folk and a similar discontent that the wealthier class of parents may have for their children as anything but a furtherance of their lineage. However, we can take a bit of a deep dive into this one and understand a bit more from the historical events it’s describing.

Joseph P. Kennedy was the US Ambassador in the UK before and during the beginning of WWII. In the context of the novel, he is being used to represent both the above stated disregard of children for anything other than furthering one’s name, but also for the blurring of political lines he represented — i.e. purportedly being a democrat while serving the furtherance of a highly conservative anti-communist ideology. This is first seen in Nalline calling him ‘Jew-zeppy,’ a play on his name Joseph and the Italian Giuseppe, while also calling to mind his horrific anti-Semitism. While Kennedy was a supposed Democrat, the party which is less overtly racist than the Republican party, he was also staunchly anti-Semitic — not to the extent that someone like Hitler or any of the Nazi party were, but to the level where he would complain about the ‘greedy’ and ‘scheming’ nature of the Jewish People. He even viewed Hitler as a coming savior to the issues that he believed he was seeing in society. So, despite the fact that he supported other ‘progressive’ ideologies and also that he staunchly stated that he did not mean that all Jews were evil, the end result was exactly the same: a furtherance of the Nazification of the Elite classes, and a display of the evil behind both the bipartisan nature of the ruling class and the little difference actually held between party lines. Similarly, though it doesn’t come until after WWII (but Part 4 is all about post-WWII, so it only makes sense to dive a bit into the future), Joseph Kennedy will make alliance with the extreme right-wing Senator, Joseph McCarthy due to their mutual hatred toward Communists — McCarthy being the brains behind the Red Scare. Party lines will continue to be blurred in favor of a hyper-capitalist, anti-communist system, and any sort of fighting amongst these parties will be a distraction just as Pynchon stated earlier that “the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing” (1.14, pg. 105). Well, same goes for politics; the real business there is the maintenance of capitalism and the Elite class’s power. All the other policies are there to cause infighting amongst the voters. Yes, they’re important, but the politicians surely don’t care what happens there as long as their original intention is maintained.

On top of this, we see Joseph P. Kennedy’s lack of care toward his son. In 1942, his son, John F. Kennedy (JFK), saved a number of men on a destroyed PT boat which later required hospitalization based on the stress and injuries he sustained while doing so. Joseph P. Kennedy’s official statement on this issue immediately followed his wife’s statement, and was something along the lines of, ‘What she said.’ Nalline, originally worried about Slothrop in this letter, by the end states, “Really I love Jack [JFK] like Hogan⁷ and Tyrone, just like a son, my own son. I even love him like I don’t love my sons, ha-ha!” (682-683). These men and women in power have one thing on their mind, maintaining that power. Yes, their children matter to them, but very few sane parents would respond to the injuries or the near deaths of their children as these men and women would.

Finally, Nalline mentions a speech that Joseph P. Kennedy gave at the GE (General Electric) plant. As reported (historically, not just in the novel) by Time magazine on September 24, 1945⁸, Joseph P. Kennedy bought property and invested in industry in Chicago shortly after the death of his eldest son, only to go on to his hometown of Massachusetts to discuss the changes they needed to make for a failing industrial center. Clearly this did not go over too well with many people, as they saw an incredibly wealthy man purchasing property and business for his own personal gain while telling a failing industry (which is putting vast numbers of working-class people out of jobs) to make specific changes to improve that industry. This final point goes to show the disparity of the Elite class’s spending compared to what they believe policy should be.

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Up Next: Part 4, Chapter 6.2 (finishing up on page 692, at the end of the section titled, A Moment of Fun with Takeshi and Ichizo, the Komical Kamikazes)

1. The idea of a ‘gestalt conscious’ Oedipal Complex is something that Pynchon explored in far greater detail within his previous novel, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965).

2. “Now ev’rybody—” (677) is quite the important line as well. It comes up later. If you’ve read the novel before, you’ll know it. If not, keep it in mind.

3. A direct call to the Byron the Bulb chapter (4.3) where the Phoebus Cartel purposefully altered the tallow industry so that consumers could not use candles in place of their light bulbs.

4. This one calling all the way back to Pirate’s banana breakfast (1.1 & 1.2), where we saw that the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) caused a desire for products which would typically be unattainable in a pre-industrial world, leading to mass worker and societal exploitation so that — like Slothrop desires his Baby Ruths — we could all get our little treats.

5. And who would even be brought over to America to work for the government and various agencies via Operation Paperclip (Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 will also explore this largely).

6. This letter is likely being written after Slothrop’s fragmentation, possibly sometime in September 1945 given the speech that Nalline mentions Ambassador Kennedy giving near the end of the letter actually did occur in September of 1945.

7. Slothrop has a brother named Hogan. Going back through the book, he is mentioned a few brief times. In 1.4 (pg. 29) near the end of Slothrop’s family history, Hogan is said to wake Slothrop up to watch the Northern lights. In 2.1 (pg. 184), Slothrop mentions that the horrible Hawaiian shirt he is wearing was sent by his brother Hogan. And there are a few other mentions throughout the book, none of them really seeming to add much thematically, but I thought it’d be interesting to mention since most people always forget Tyrone even has a brother.

8. Here’s a link to the actual article — Massachusetts: Kennedy Hits the Trail