StudyBoss » The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49

In a story as confusing and ambiguous as Thomas Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49, it is difficult to connect any aspect of the book to a piece of modern culture. However, Oedipas quest, her search for the truth, and the paranoia therein, are inherent in the plots of todays most-watched television and movies. Though many themes from the story can be tied to modern culture, perhaps the most prominent is the theme of a quest for truth. Oedipas quest is best represented via a popular FOX television show called The X-Files. At first sight, the comparison is almost too obvious.

Agent Fox Mulder, played by David Duchovny, seeks the truth behind the apparent mystery of alien abduction and the supernatural, a quest that he dubs the X-Files. Oedipa, too, is looking for the truth underneath her mystery: WASTE. Both characters yearn for the truth behind events, a truth that may or may not exist, in mysteries that fold plots upon themselves endlessly. Beyond the obvious similarities, however, lie more, almost uncanny, parallels. Though both Mulder and Oedipa claim to seek the truth, what they both seek is resolution to the questions within themselves.

For example, it is understood by fans of The X-Files that Mulder began his search for extraterrestrial life with the supposed alien abduction of his sister. The quest for the truth, then, is personalized for Agent Mulder, as he himself claims that he would not work as an FBI agent if his sister had not been [supposedly] abducted. Oedipa is on a personal quest as well. No other character in the story seeks the truth behind WASTE, the muted couriers horn, the play The Couriers Tragedy, Pierce Inveraritys stamps, and a secret postal service.

In fact, no one else has ever before made such a [possibly ridiculous] connection! So, as both characters seek their personal truths, they slowly begin to fear that no answer exists. The motives of these two seekers are important, and indeed similar. There seems to be an obsession to find a truth in symbols (be they horns or crop circles), a truth that both characters come to realize may not even exist. By definition, obsession is a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling.

Therefore, the moment that their questions are absolved, the moment that their hypotheses are proved, the quest and its subsequent paranoia, frustration, and pain are removed. The motive is fear that the quest is unending, that there is no answer to the questions, and perhaps that there truly was no mystery to begin with. For each character, Mulder and Oedipa, this fear drives them in their personal quests for the truth. Many themes from The Crying of Lot 49 can be seen in modern culture, especially movies: paranoia in Conspiracy Theory and Enemy of the State, and Hilariuss psycho-drug culture in Girl Interrupted.

However, no movie or show ties so well to Oedipas quest as FOXs The X-Files. Both Oedipa Maas and Fox Mulder seek personal truths, one based on a secret postal system, another on alien intervention in human life, but they hold more in common than it first appears. Maybe aliens are delivering mail behind the back of the US government. Black Boy In the penultimate chapter of Black Boy, Richard very uncharacteristically participates in a boxing match with Harrison, a fellow black boy employee. Though this seems unlikely early in the chapter, Richard eventually caves to Harrisons requests for a fight.

The culture instigating this fight is fairly obvious: the white employers want to see the black boys fight like a dog or rooster for their entertainment. The ideology behind the event, then, would be the assumptions of the white men, like most in the Southern culture in this book, are that blacks are inferior to whites. This idea is not consciously implemented into the minds of the employers, but it is an aspect of the culture that they take for granted. In the minds of Richard and Harrison, however, such a fight would be degrading.

However, Harrison needs the money that the white men offer him for the fight. For Harrison, it is not so much an ideology that influences his choice, but a need, that cash is necessary to survive. For Richard, though, a deeper influence may be pressing him to fight. All through Chapter 12, Richard opposes the idea of a fight. Even at first, when the white men try to trick him into thinking that Harrison wants to hurt him, he is wary and intelligent enough to not fall for the ploy. Later, when Harrison presses him to fight, Richard says, I dont want to fight for white men.

Im no dog or rooster. However, almost immediately thereafter, Richard agrees to the fight. What caused this sudden change of mind? Call them ideologies, perhaps, but there is a combination of factors that lead Richard to fight. First of all, Richard feels a loyalty to Harrison as a co-worker and fellow black boy, evidenced in Richards narration: Harrison and I knew each other casually, but there had never been the slightest trouble between us and Harrison was black and so was I; I would ignore the warning of the white man and talk face to face with a boy of my own color.

Secondly, the ideas that the employers plant in the minds of Richard and Harrison are seeds of doubt that both men can stifle for a while, but eventually they grow and flower. Richard tells us, We were toying with the idea of death for no reason that stemmed from our own lives, but because the men who ruled us had thrust the idea into our minds. Perhaps, in these words, the fear of unemployment or worse, death at the hands of the white men, also caused Richard to fight. By doing this, Richard feels he has done something unclean for which I [he] could not properly atone.

In fighting for the white men, Richard has helped maintain the status quo of the white-superior society. This fight certainly maintains the status quo in Southern culture in this era. Black submission to the white man was accepted and expected every day, and by allowing himself to fight, Richard feels he has not only let down himself, but his entire dream as well. Throughout the book, Richard tries to change cultural standards, and in fighting Harrison, he has given up on those standards, if only for a moment, and allowed himself to help the culture he fights so hard to change.

The cultures of black and white, in this scenario, are both in conflict and in support of each other. It appears that black culture is supporting white culture, in that the black boys participate in the fights staged by white men. However, these fights are, at the same time, degrade black culture further. As Richard sees it, blacks must escape from this kind of oppression, and for Richard, that escape is education, his key to freedom. The uncharacteristic fight that Richard takes place in is, indeed, not so uncharacteristic at all, once the ideology and culture of his surroundings are examined.

Though Richard feels, perhaps, that he should not have taken part in the fight, the message he conveys in the book would not be quite the same. It is not one ideology or one aspect of his culture that led him to the decision to fight, but rather, it was many smaller sub-ideologies that brought him to the decision. Bastard Out of Carolina Love is a word, a signifier, tied to many meanings, all different in context, cultures, and ideologies. Love is used numerous ways in Allisons Bastard Out of Carolina, by many characters.

In the character of Bone, love is a confused thing, always changing, as Bone uses it to fit her life on the fly. In relation to parental love, Bone wants Daddy Glen to love her. However, early in the book, Bones conception of love is that of a child, obviously. On page 52, she says, I wanted him to love us. I wanted to be able to love him. I wanted him to pick me up gently and tell Mama again how much he loved us all. This idea of love is simple, involving hugs, smiles, and friendliness, the sort of love Bone gets from Anney. However, as Bones relationship with Glen changes, so does her perception of love.

On page 108, Glen asks Bone, Dont you know how I love you? Bone thinks to herself, No, I did not know. This is near the beginning of Bones confusion about love, what it means, and what it does. At the time he asks her, he is molesting her. It is no wonder that Bone was confused, having love expressed simply, from her mother, and sexually (if indeed it is love) from Glen. This confusion leads bone to question the idea of love, and to look elsewhere for it, perhaps to compare. Love, she finds, is a prominent idea in the Southern Baptist church.

Bone is enthralled with the black and white of Christianity, the definitive line drawn between good and evil, because she can see where the love is, and what it does. She believes she can see that other people truly love one another, and believing this, she thinks the has a better grasp on the abstract idea of love. However, as Bone later discovers, love is abstract, and being abandoned by her mother, she never truly figures it out. The problem within, for Bone, is that love is a conceptual idea, and that, really, it means something different to each person.

Not only that, but love is used by others, in ways that may not suit anyone elses conceptions of the idea. So when Anney insists to Bone and everyone else that Glen loves her and her girls, Bone tends, of course, to believe her, and thus the idea of love is transferred to how Glen treats Bone. His sexual and physical abuse to her takes on the meaning of love, because she believes that Glen loves her, and anything he does must be representational of that love. However, her confusion stems from the fact that others, too, love her, and do not treat her in this way.

Bone, in trying to discover the meaning of love, compares between the love of people, compares their actions, and compares their histories. In her encounters with Raylene, Bone finds that love, for her aunt, meant sacrificing one person for anothers well being. Her experiences with the church show her that love is universal, and that each person should love one another. The problem lies in peoples actions regarding love. Had everyone acted similarly toward Bone, especially Daddy Glen, the child would not have been nearly so confused and traumatized.

Love, indeed, is an abstract concept, very difficult for anyone, especially a child to grasp. Bone tries to find out what love means, but the situations in which she is placed do not lend themselves to analysis of a less-than-concrete idea. I think that without the readers own conception of love in the back of his mind during the story, the book would not succeed. Because love is socially regarded as a good thing, a beautiful thing, and something to be cherished, Bones conceptions of love, whatever it may be, frustrate and sadden the reader.

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StudyBoss » The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49

The philosophy behind all Pynchon novels lies in the synthesis of philosophers and modern physicists. Ludwig Wittgenstein viewed the world as a “totality of facts, not of things. “1 This idea can be combined with a physicist’s view of the world as a closed system that tends towards chaos. Pynchon asserts that the measure of the world is its entropy. 2 He extends this metaphor to his fictional world. He envelops the reader, through various means, within the system of The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon designed The Crying of Lot 49 so that there would be two levels of observation: that of the characters such as our own

Oedipa Maas, whose world is limited to the text, and that of the reader, who looks at the world from outside it but who is also affected by his relationship to that world. 3 Both the reader and the characters have the same problems observing the chaos around them. The protagonist in The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Mass, like Pynchon’s audience, is forced to either involve herself in the deciphering of clues or not participate at all. 4 Oedipa’s purpose, besides executing a will, is finding meaning in a life dominated by assaults on people’s perceptions through drugs, sex and television.

She is forced out of her complacent ousewife lifestyle of tupperware parties and Muzak into a chaotic system beyond her capabilities to understand. Images and facts are constantly spit forth. Oedipa’s role is that of Maxwell’s Demon: to sort useful facts from useless ones. The reader’s role is also one of interpreting countless symbols and metaphors to arrive at a meaning. Each reader unravels a different meaning. Unfortunately, Maxwell’s Demon can only apply to a closed system. Pynchon’s fictional system is constantly expanding to include more and more aspects of contemporary America.

Therefore, the reader and Oedipa are inefficient orters. Both are left at a panicky state of confusion, or paranoia. Paranoia unites the reader and Oedipa. If we define “paranoia” not as a mental aberration but as a tendency to find meaning in symbols whether the meanings exist or not, we can clearly see the similarity between Oedipa and us. Paranoids do not see plots here and there in history; they see a conspiracy as the driving force behind all historical events. At the climax of the novel, Oedipa sees the muted post horn everywhere she goes.

Could she simply be delusional, as most witnesses to her think, or is there actually a conspiracy nvolving the Trystero? As Oedipa delves into the Trystero’s history and Pierce’s estate, one of four possibilities arises: “… either she has indeed stumbled onto a secret organization having objective, historical existence … ; or she is hallucinating it by projecting a pattern onto various signs only randomly associated; or she is the victim of a hoax… ; or she is hallucinating such a hoax… “6 The tension among all four ossibilities leads to Oedipa becoming increasing more paranoid as the novel progresses.

One of the most effective literary techniques Pynchon uses to nvolve the reader in his fictional world is his use of details. 7 The explicit history of Thurn and Taxis serves to overburden the reader with names and places that on the surface have no relation to the story at hand. The purpose of these details is to overlap the reader’s world with the fictional one. Pynchon flirts with the reader. He allows the reader to see more of his world than any of his other characters can. Pynchon wants to lure the reader into the character’s search for meaning.

Furthermore, the alternations of fact with fiction, such as the description of the historical basis of the Peter Pinguid Society8, confuse the reader to such an extent that he is forced to rely upon Oedipa to decipher reality from illusion. Pynchon even denies the reader and Oedipa time to sort out the information by moving rapidly to the next event. The blending of authenticity with fiction introduces an epistemological aspect to Pynchon’s work. Much of The Crying of Lot 49 tackles the historical evidence for the Trystero.

Scholars have found that the actual history of the Trystero, a Renaissance postal system, was shrouded in mystery. It is also entirely possible that GIs were buried underneath a lake after W. W. II. Why is it not possible that their bones were used for cigarette filter? Pynchon wants the reader to recognize and plunge into the shaded area between fiction and reality. Pierce and Pynchon tell Oedipa and the reader, respectively, that we don’t know much for certain. In Pynchon’s comical world, our senses deceive us, ruling out an Empirical solution to the epistemological question.

What seems rational really is not, making a Rationalist solution unacceptable. By ruling out a basis for an epistemological interpretation outside the text, Pynchon commands the audience to accept Oedipa as its interpreter. The mystery-story plot used in Lot 49 is the most obvious reader- involvement technique. What is the Trystero? Who was Pierce Inverarity? These basic questions are placed close to the novel’s surface to drive the reader to explore further, at the very least. In fact, a mystery novel is a very basic meta-novel.

The reader construes a suspect before the author reveals it to him. In our case, we think that events, places and names connect, but we are never sure until Pynchon confirms it for us, if at all. There are many metaphors that describe the relationship between the author and reader in Lot 49. The name Oedipa Maas evokes the famous Greek riddle-solver Oedipus, whose quest to interpret the Delphic prophecies leads to his downfall. Maas elicits the reader to think of Newton’s laws, where Oedipa is acted upon by the gravity of her surroundings.

An object, once put in motion, as Oedipa is when she is named executrix of a will, tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Pynchon gives us two options when presenting metaphors like the Oedipus or Newtonian allusion: either they are patterns for interpreting the meaning of Lot 49, or they are unclear, deceptive invitations for nterpretations, purposely made up by the author. 10 The character that unites the respective quests of the reader and Oedipa is Pierce verarity, Oedipa’s dead ex-boyfriend.

The objects that Inverarity leaves behind at his death are clues to his identity. It is the job of Oedipa to “bestow life on what had persisted, to try to be what Driblette was, the dark machine in the center of the planetarium, to bring the estate into pulsing stelliferous Meaning, all in a soaring dome around here. “11 To Oedipa, Pierce is a thought that could impose an order on the chaos of clues around her. Pierce could make complicated etworks out of nothing. He alone created the chaos around Oedipa. Pynchon succeeds in embodying Pierce Inverarity as a force within the novel.

Pierce was a “knight of deliverance”12 who had “failed to free Oedipa Maas from the tower of her own consciousness of the world. “13 To put it in terms of paranoia, Inverarity is the conspirator behind all events in the novel. The author, Pynchon, parallels Pierce. Pynchon creates a web of events that the reader must interpret. The reader is blanketed beneath a “semiotic regime,” a place where signs and symbols can be decoded in an infinite number of ways. 14 The most ingenious method of involving the reader in the novel in Lot 49 is the mock-Jacobean drama ‘The Courier’s Tragedy’.

Pynchon compares Oedipa witnessing the play to the reader apprehending the novel. For example, Pynchon switches from Jacobean vocabulary to modern phrases (“While a battle rages in the streets outside the palace, Pasquale is locked up in his patrician hothouse, holding an orgy. “15). This distances the reader from the play, similar to Oedipa’s role as a confused onlooker, thereby giving Oedipa and us a false sense of security. We soon find elements of ‘The Courier’s Tragedy’ almost in all ubsequent events of the novel. Pynchon, via Driblette, speaks to the reader: “You guys, you’re like the Puritans about the Bible.

So hung up with words, words. “16 This is not a warning to the reader and Oedipa against interpretation. Instead, it is a warning to the reader and Oedipa of the addictive nature of their respective searches. Oedipa’s search for the original version of ‘The Courier’s Tragedy’, which is obstructed by her inability to separate her play from its author, editor or producer, is an exaggerated metaphor of the reader’s troubles in making sense of the novel. 17 The above-mentioned metaphors and literary techniques are ehicles for many other of Pynchon’s themes.

For our purposes, they serve to wed the reader’s quest for a literary meaning with Oedipa’s quest for self-discovery. As mentioned before, a major element within the reader and Oedipa’s quest is paranoia. Paranoia pushes the reader through the text. We are constantly led towards a conclusion, but then deceived. Our inability to decipher symbols relates to our inability to increase the communicative entropy of our world. Nevertheless, The Crying of Lot 49 succeeds in actively involving the reader within the text, a hallmark of postmodern literature.

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