Gravity's Rainbow discussion

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore...

I have a pretty specific confusion that I would like some clarification about.

Somewhere about 2/3 thru this Section--In the Zone-- we're introduced to Mikos Thanatz. This man is the husband of Margherita (Greta) Erdmann. There is early reference to this couple's role as entertainers of the troops, and entertainers at rocket sites.

Right now, I'm reading "Ensign Morituri's Story", which confuses me in its own right. But as this story next spills over into events at Peenemünde, there seems to be an implication that Thanatz's relationship to Captain Blicero is professional, like that of a scientist, engineer, or technician.

Am I missing something? Is he simply a valued entertainer?

If this is a plot line that is clarified later in the book as a puzzle piece, then I'm not asking for a major spoiler right now. But if this is something I'm misreading, I'd like a clarification.

All help is appreciated. Spoilers will be forgiven :)

A good question Mosca--did you ever find the answer? It's not really clear why he's at the rocket firing...I thought maybe he was tagging along with Greta (who was needed for weird, sexual material testing?) and Blicero just liked having random people around (he had mostly lost it by this point, right?).

One scene that was presented as if it had some singular important, but which I can make nothing of, is Slothrop's dream of the woman who has sex with all the animals and then becomes some kind of fertility goddess. Anyone have any theories on what this was signifying?

Bram,

My best observation is that Blicero gathered around himself a group of people that were as decadent as himself. They seemed to share a murky agenda that was never really clear to me, that involved the rocket in a less than official way. It also appears that Gotfried's fate was tied up in this agenda.

The obscure information surrounding this agenda seem to be a Pynchon pattern.

Slothrop's dream was also not clear to me.

I am now exactly at the point where "Ensign Morituri's Story" begins.

Bram wrote: "One scene that was presented as if it had some singular important, but which I can make nothing of, is Slothrop's dream of the woman who has sex with all the animals and then becomes some kind of fertility goddess. Anyone have any theories on what this was signifying?"

I am only shooting in the dark..but the woman in the dream could be an allusion to Greta, in reference to how several children were conceived after people watched her movie. I think at some point, the narrator (or was it Slothrop?) refers to all of them as being Greta's children.
Does this seem to make any sense?

Yes it does---I think you're definitely on to something with that. There were also all the men with black masks (and I think animal masks as well) that she had sex with in the deleted scene that was mentioned later. Great pick up Megha.

I just started part 4: The Counterforce. Great book.