Dr. Hitler Hilarius

The scene starting on pg. 108 really got me, it was pretty funny but at the same time I get this feeling that the subtext is just going straight over my head - like Oedipa, at first she thinks the gunshot is "an instect whirring loudly past her ear" (108). When I read this scene twice over, I found that it was almost as if Hilarius was trying to bring Oedipa to a point of complete clarification. Indeed, she went to Hilarius' office to have confirmation that "she was some kind of a nut and needed a rest, and there there was no Trystero." (107) I particularly want to focus on a few lines that Hilarius says before the police arrive.

But instead she gets pulled into this crazy hostage situation where it becomes clear that she is, by our definitions, more sane then her shrink - (also, interesting that Pynchon used the more colloquial word) - as he is in this hallucination of World War II. The references that Hilarius makes, such as Speer (who was originally an architect for Hitler, but moved through the ranks and started to debate how exactly Germany should 'colonize', it was his view on the economies that could've brought the Nazi Regime to power in all of Europe, but the other view [which was that the territories conquered should be drained of their resources in human labor, industry, etc] won out and helped lead to the disintegration of the Nazis), definitely place his hallucination. Then when Oedipa goes in to help him as Helga Blamm makes instant coffee outside, she is very cool and casual about it.

I saw the entire experience as something that Oedipa could've used to gain knowledge, but instead it's used as a publicity stunt (when Mucho meets her outside and gets her opinion on the radio). The one section where Hilarius tries to defend the entire goose chase that Oedipa has been on seems very clear and not the voice or mind of someone going through a hallucination.

" ' Cherish it!' cried Hilarius, fiercely. 'What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.' " (113).

It is then that the police, who seem most cowardly of all, appear to bring the situation under control. What Hilarius says seems to be a commentary on the state of American society, with the mass production and communication, taking away the responsibility of those involved to create personal connections. The entire novel concerned with a type of communication - letters - it's just interesting to look at communication now and compare it. We have the internet, which allows for us to communicate without any emotional responsibility at all - so in a way, with the lack of face to face communication, we "begin to cease to be" because human interaction is needed to develop.

There's so much in these few lines - like every few lines of Pynchon's novel. But today the line "don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you" is very powerful. There seems to be a solution to every tiny emotional complex problem that comes up in society today and the solution always seems to be a prescription slip. The fantasy that Oedipa thought she was living, it brought her out of the comfort zone of tupperware parties and the suburbia of California, and that's what is important now. While people today may not be entirely content with their lives, but they're not brave enough to pursue something like Oedipa did, to move entirely out of what they know and use the smallest leads to go deeper into something that half the time they don't even know if it exists.

Just wondering what other people thought on this - this sort of prediction Pynchon has in Hilarius' lines.