Let's Focus on Similarities

For this blog, I believe it is necessary to revisit the piece in the course packet titled Rhetoric-What It Is; Why Needed and the line on page 10 that was discussed in class, “I mean by good [writing] reasonably clear and straightforward”. Although upon first glance of Thomas Pynchon’s essay Journey into the Mind of Watts, one would assume that his style of writing nonfiction was completely different from his work of fiction in The Crying of Lot 49; I would have to say that his style remains the same. In both pieces of literature he has an agenda, a point to get across, which is “clear and straightforward”. Although The Crying of Lot 49 is written so that Oedipa’s thoughts and actions are jumbled, Pynchon’s messages about identity and communication are made clear by his way of satirically using those thoughts and actions. Journey into the Mind of Watts begins with a very blunt killing of a black man by a white policeman, making Pynchon’s anti-racist agenda very obvious.

The details that Pynchon puts into his work, whether fiction or nonfiction, are elaborate making the reader not only more interested in what he has to say but also nodding in agreement with what he has to say. Take for example, the description of the painting “Bordando el Manto Terrestre” on page 11 of The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon not only describes the painting to look exactly like it does, but also gives life and emotion to it, and though this description gives the audience insight into Oedipa’s life. In this one description, he tells his reader that Oedipa is trapped in a confusing world and that this painting sparked a search for her identity, which she believes she will never find. The fact that Oedipa begins to cry over this painting seals the deal for Pynchon; the audience is now hooked on wanting Oedipa to get out of her miserable situation. He uses pathos and the tears of his main character to get the reader to agree with all that he says from that point on. In Journey into the Mind of Watts Pynchon uses a similar technique of very detailed descriptions and an innocent character, in this case a child, to once again get the reader to agree with his point. The part of the essay where he describes a child in “bare feet” stepping on glass and not being bothered by it nearly sums up how bad the situation is in Watts and makes the reader want to get up and start fighting racism that very second.