Part 4 - Chapter 6.3: Fragments of Our Future, Part 3

Analysis of Gravity's Rainbow, Part 4 - Chapter 6.3: A World of Dead Roads, Police Raids, White Noise, the Hotchkiss and the Murder of Crowds, Electricity as Dope, the Rocket's Phallic Properties

Streets

Slothrop walks through the streets of a dead world. "It could have been the Semlower Strasse, in Stralsund" (692): the town where Frau Gnahb dropped him off after raiding the Anubis. Or, could it have been Greifswald, where Pökler "spent the spring and summer converting a little island, the Greifswalder Oie, into a testing station" (3.11, pg. 404)? Or wait, maybe "it could be the Slüterstrasse in the old part of Rostock," (692) the town where Slothrop’s fragmentation really started to get going — where he spoke to trees and to the ghost of Tantivy, where he dreamt of keys with no locks (3.25). But, could it actually be in Lüneberg? Did Slothrop ever even pass through there? Or is it his consciousness now floating on by?

It does not matter. Slothrop’s consciousness is seeing the dead world, but knows that "in each of these streets, some vestige of humanity, of Earth, has to remain. No matter what has been done to it, no matter what it’s been used for" (693). The streets of Stralsund appeared dead before this moment. Those of Rostock looked off toward the trees which would soon be razed from their home. Lüneberg’s lush heathland would have patches of burnt Earth from the launching of deadly weapons. Each city in Germany, and abroad, would hold some form of death within the roads, the towers, the paths, the parks. But, ‘no matter what has been done,’ no matter how much death is held within the streets of the afterwar, life remains — or, at least, hope remains. There are preachers who keep speaking to the living and the dead. There are men and women who recall certain sounds, medians lined with trees no longer there, wide streets which buses used to travel down, the way rain sounded at night. And each city, each alleyway, each passage, will hold some memory worth cherishing. Because, if we hold onto those memories and moments, then one day, "finding it, learning to cherish what was lost, mightn’t we find some way back" (693) to the streets filled with life, nostalgia, and love?

Slothrop, walking through one of these streets, comes across a newspaper scrap, which if you fill in the blanks, states, ATOM BOMB DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA, along with accompanying symbols of sex, mythology, and religion. The image of the mushroom cloud appears to be ‘a giant white cock’ and it appears next to the picture of a pin-up girl figure "riding astraddle the cannon of a tank," (694) furthering the conditioned Slothropian mindset of sex and death’s merging. Taking it a step further though, the cloud "is also, perhaps, a Tree. . . ." (694). Yggdrasil: the tree of life on which all of the Norse realms rested. Or, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life: the representation of a journey from the mortal to the spiritual realm and the gaining of knowledge via the journey. These realms and lives, in the post-nuclear world, cannot be separated from the bomb. It is the defining factor of our existence. Knowing this, Slothrop can only sit on the curb for some inordinate amount of time, head in his hands.

Listening to the Toilet

Recalling Slothrop in the Transvestite’s Toilet, though now it is someone else in another stall . . . We begin to get a little paranoid: "The basic idea is that They will come and shut off the water first" (694). But why would They do such a thing? Clearly They do not want us all just to immediately die of thirst, given we are the class which produces Their wealth for Them. But oh, no, we’re talking about toilet water, not drinkable water. This stopping of the ‘inflow/outflow’ is something that will make our lives a bit more miserable and dependent on Their ‘good graces,’ but that doesn’t existence unfeasible.

This toilet, which someone is currently listening to, could be imagined to be back at Der Platz, the tenement which houses the masses of drug users trying to block the police off from entering. The cessation of flow indicates a coming police raid (we’ll get to why that is in a second), "So it’s good policy [to] always have the toilet valve cracked a bit […] so when it stops you’ll have that extra minute or two" (694). It will allow you, if you have the ability to perceive the slight change in ‘white noise,’ to know when They are arriving.

White noise is all around us. An example is given regarding the Sun. What we have been told is that the near complete lack of matter in space makes it so that sonic waves cannot travel given there is no medium for them to reflect off of. If some medium did exist — "what used to be called an ‘aether’" (695) — then the Sun’s roar would deafen us. But, what if this was a lie. What if that roar has been persistent from birth, and the fact that we don’t notice it because we have either become acclimated to its white noise, or that we have evolved to not perceive it, is deafening us to certain other spectra around us? What if this noise is something They know about and can get around, but that the Preterite have not been told about because They benefit off of our deafness? And what if at certain times — whether it be because we have found the specific time and place on Earth where this noise will cease, or if we tapped into the part of our brain — we drown out the Sun’s invisible roar? Then, perhaps, we could hear what They do not want us to hear.

The Sun is merely an analogy; real white noise lives all around us, and not necessarily in the sole form of actual noise. White noise can be our acclimation to any aspect or entity in our society: information which we are told, implicit or explicit propaganda, beliefs ranging from anti-communism to a high regard for the military industrial complex, from the police state or capitalism as a necessary evil. All of these, and many other examples, are actual white noise. They are readily accepted as a natural drone in the background of our world which are there because they have to be, because there is no other — no better — option. But imagine, when you hear that drone cease for a moment, when you see clearly that some or even all of these entities are hiding something from us. When we stand in the ‘sound-shadow’ and hear undistorted reality for the first time, a switch in our brain will alter our thought. Perhaps this is what Pirate, Katje, and the Counterforce did: stood in the shadow, heard a scream that came across the sky, saw Preterite loaded onto train cars going nowhere or going toward their death, and realized then that this is what the ‘white noise’ had led to. A willful ignorance of the powers of Capital and the Elite would never allow such a thing to occur. But a willingness or a chance that leads us to mute the white noise could lead to revelation, and even revolution. For the toilet, as seen in the Roseland Ballroom, is not just a toilet, but a representation of that journey through the shit and detritus of the world that leads this line of revelation. And if it is shut off, not only do those residents of Der Platz lose their ability flush away the paraphernalia they may have during the coming police raid, but the symbolic ability to learn why they are being targeted in the first place. Because there is no time to find the sound-shadow if you are constantly on the run from Them. And that’s exactly how They prevent the revolution.

Witty Repartee

Ichizo and Takeshi, still on their island with nothing to do, are going a little stir crazy, which involves hallucinations and the like. While Takeshi takes a bath, Ichizo gets out his Japanese Hotchkiss machine gun and almost blows him away before being reminded that Takeshi is not, in fact, General MacArthur.

This leads us on a little history of the Hotchkiss machine gun. The American version was used to slaughter the Native Americans at Wounded Knee, and French and British versions existed which likely committed other atrocities, but now these weapons had all been melted down. The association with this weapon is its ability to kill large crowds of people in a short time span with ease. Given Takeshi and Ichizo are in a film and are being used to help propagandize the military state, we are now seeing a new version of the Hotchkiss machine gun, the Japanese variant, thrust back into society. We want to ensure that our citizens see these weapons as another piece of white noise, something that merely exists in the world as a form of defense and that even can provide us with humorous overtones, allowing us to laugh at death on TV.

So once the population is desensitized to weapons of war being in the hands of a police state — once it all becomes a drone in the background that we cannot see as anything but natural — our ignorance may lead to this weapon being used upon us. Thus — the Crown Prince Porfirio lays inside a dumpster as a group of angry Preterite revolutionaries crowd around him for revenge, not even seeing around them that the British Hotchkiss machine guns were never fully sold and melted down: instead, the troops meant to protect the people are lined up in windows, ready to rain bullets upon them.

Heart-to-Heart, Man-to-Man

What other white noise is there? The fuzz on a television screen.

Slothrop’s father is worried for him,¹ asking why he and his friends have been shooting straight electricity into their veins, a form of ‘electro-dope.’ In the coming year after the war, plugging in, or that "‘screwing in’ you kids are doing" (698), to the television or to any other electronic form of news and media, will become far more prevalent. The use of television broadcasting would increase and it would become a new form of drug — i.e. a new method to control the population. This one, however, would seem far less harmless than the previous ‘drugs’: "Listen Tyrone, you don’t know how dangerous that stuff is. Suppose someday you just plug in a go away and never come back?’" (699). The generation making use of it does not see it as a threat, only as a beneficial medium to attain information, not realizing the white-noise-implications that it also holds. The information will be presented in an easily digestible and entertaining format, showcasing itself as fact, despite being derived from the minds of the same people who want the lower classes drugged up and similarly able to be controlled. And this may be even more dangerous, for with ‘dope,’ "‘You hadda come back, every time,’" but with television, the media, the radio, the internet, and any form of electronic information, you could "‘live forever, in a clean, honest, purified Electroworld’" (699).

Some Characteristics of Imipolex G

Imipolex G does not just feel like human skin, it "is the first plastic that is actually erectile" (699).² The erectile capacity of Imipolex G furthers the comparison and attempted transformation of man to machine, or man to Rocket. And not only does it further that comparison, but it also further centers the Rocket as a phallic image, no longer with only the image and shape of a penis, but with the movement, response, and ability of one as well.

The way erectility was achieved was through an electronic signaling to the plastic’s chain-link surface, causing the ‘chains’ to tense and pull against each other, stiffening the object. This wire network covered the surface in the form of a very dense EMG. But the levels at which it can be controlled also vary in complexity, from "a beam scanning system" similar to x-ray technology or radiation therapy, to a projection technique "analogous to a motion picture" (700). Each method of controlling the erectile plastic is similar to a human-derived experience: EMGs, x-ray/radiation technology, and film. But despite this, it does not change the fact that the attempt to bring machine or plastic to life is just that: an attempt. There is no possibility in which this can be achieved, and the continuation of this quest will lead — well, now that we’re in the Raketen-Stadt, it’s more like, has led — to each of the Fragments of this chapter³: the reliance on a genetically superior people, the hopeless hope for revolution, the apologia given toward Nazis and war criminals, the assassinations of the leaders of social movements or those inspiring true change, the military police state, the distribution of drugs as a means of control, film as a method of brainwashing the population, ever pervasive ‘white noise,’ and television, media, and the internet, all being used as furtherance of Their grip over our lives.

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Up Next: Part 4, Chapter 7

Thank you all for dealing with a long three parter for this chapter. It’s a long and difficult one. But! All posts for the remainder of the novel will be one part since they’re shorter. Even the last chapter will be one part; it’s a very long chapter and thus a very long post, but I want to keep it as one since it’s the end.

1. This seems to be Slothrop’s real father, not the evil father figure represented at the beginning of 4.6.

2. I can’t remember if I had mentioned Imipolex G’s erectile capacity before (what a sentence…). If I did, it was probably just because that fact is in the back of my mind. But it would have been a ‘spoiler’ since that was not revealed until this chapter. So if you thought I was crazy, it’s just because it’s hard to separate what I’m reading now from what I’ve read before.

3. Each of these coming points relates to a ‘Fragment’ as follows:

• The reliance on a genetically superior people (The Frame, with the Floundering Four)

• The hopeless hope for revolution (The Low Frequency Listener, via Slothrop’s memory of the Triptych Dream)

• The apologia given toward Nazis and war criminals (The Low Frequency Listener, with the Nuremburg Trials)

• The assassinations of the leaders of social movements or those inspiring true change (Shit ‘n’ Shinola, with the assassination of Malcolm X)

• The military police state (On the Phrase “Ass Backwards” and Witty Repartee, with the propaganda surrounding police and weaponry)

• The distribution of drugs as a means of control (My Doper’s Cadenza, with the police helping distribute drugs into Der Platz)

• Film as a method of brainwashing the population (A Moment of Fun with Takeshi and Ichizo, The Komical Kamikazes, with its television military propaganda

• Ever pervasive ‘white noise’ (Listening to the Toilet, with its discussion of various sound-shadows

• Television, media, and the internet (Heart-to-Heart, Man-to-Man, with its discussion of TV as a general means of propaganda)