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The transition from Slothrop's experience whipping and fucking Greta Erdmann, to Pökler's experience years earlier, fantasizing about doing it, is totally seamless, which suggests to me some sort of kinship between the two of them. What do they have in common besides their real/imagined coupling with Marge? -- They are both engineers, I guess -- I mean I never really thought of Slothrop as an engineer before, but he is, right? Or else how could he understand all the A4 stuff...

And both of them seem pretty passive in their relationship to the rest of the world. Pökler obviously, I mean we're just about to read a 30-page story about his passivity, that is practically the sum total of his character in the book. And Slothrop too, I think, sort of moves along the pathways laid out for him by his author without making many futile attempts at resistance. (Where did that sentence come from?) Look at him in London, in Monaco, even in his escape from the Casino -- always following the path of least resistance. Perhaps lately, in the Zone, he has found something meaningful enough to rouse him to action -- and we could talk here about the "What sea is this you have crossed?" line in the previous section, how it could be directed at Slothrop -- we will have to wait and see :--)

I reckon I might assert that Pökler is the passive element in Slothrop's nature -- but I'm not sure what I would mean by that. It could also be interesting to look at the transition from Slothrop's head to Pökler's head as an illustration of how (as I posted previously) the borders of Slothrop's personality are getting leaky. Also how their passivity ties in with the S & M -- if that's not too obvious -- it seems to me like Pökler is more actively interested in being a sadist than Slothrop, who just does it because a couple of the women he's with want him to. Or is that a reader trap?