I've still got some reading to go, but I'm starting to notice a lot of focus on children in this section, and so I thought I'd jot down my thoughts on the darker side of innocense and youth.
It's interesting that the novel describes innocence as a valuable resource that a state can package/preserve/manufacture: "In a corporate State, a place must be made for innocence, and its many uses. In developing an official version of innocence, the culture of childhood has proven invaluable." (419 in my book).. then it goes on to describe "Zwolfkinder", the eerie resort that's run completely by children. And while this place is supposed to be the ideal fairyland, it clearly has a cryptic side (easily visible in the not-so-innocent children). Polker takes his daughter Ilse there, but she is clearly irreparably damaged by her stay in the Dora camp. And the boys she looks at in Zwolfkinder ignore her, because "They dreamed of their orders, of colossal explosions and death [...] someday I will have a herd of [women] for myself... but first I must find my captain... somewhere out in the War... first they must deliver me from this little place..." (429). These boys have already outgrown the make-believe world of childhood, and are preparing themselves for a life of violence and sex. It seems as if innocence is just a guise that children wear.
This idea is supported by Bianca, Margherita's long lost daughter who we meet later in the novel. She has hardly reached puberty, and yet she is already involved in sexual politics (she has sex with Slothrop, and even suggests leaving with him), and has clearly separated herself from the authority of her mother. She, like all the children in this book, is like a mini-adult. Any expression of innocence is merely a guise. Perhaps it's because it's impossible to survive as an innocent in the world of GR.
I think that Bianca is a really good example of your point. She wears the "guise of innocence"(I really like your word choice there, by the way) with her whole Shirley Temple song-and-dance routine; Slothrop even notes her "asexual child-fat" (473). But then, a few pages later, they're having sex. It's interesting, too, that Slothrop is attracted to this girl who he estimates is only 11 or 12 years old (although the companion puts her age more at 16 or 17). That definitely says something about his character. But, back to Bianca, it seems as though her Shirley Temple innocence-act really was just an act and not an expression of any true innocent qualities.
I agree with you. The Bianca episode was perverse and haunting-- I truly didn't know what to make of it. I found it nightmarish that all these children (including the ones in the children-run town) are masquerading behind these adult disguises. I think this story is trying to provide a gross hyperbole of how children are forced to grow up during war. Or, in Bianca's case, how children (or adults) might be forced to change in the face of their incredible hardships. These people are forced to lose their innocence, but unfortunately, in Bianca's case, often seem to hold on to their vulnerability.
That fact that Slothrop "knows he is vulnerable, more than he should be, to pretty little girls" (471) is an entirely different topic and is definitley telling about his character. Does anyone get the idea that Pynchon is sometimes making slams at Americans through his Slothrop character?
Yeah, and it's a particularly poignant comparison since Shirly Temple was supposed to be a light of innocence during a very dark time in society.
In the same childhood/purity vein... the references to Hansel and Gretel (and the whole twisted Blicero/Gottfried/Katje dynamic) returns in this section as well. It's interesting because although Hansel and Gretel are supposed to be innocent, it is ultimately a story about child abuse, murder and cannibalism. There's a passage later where Gretel explains she has "more identities than she knew what to do with" (482)... children's identities are pretty dichotomous in GR, after all; they're expected to be cute and innocent, but also objects of lust.