Reading this novel, I almost felt like I was unraveling a mystery myself, similar to the protagonist Oedipa herself. Wrapped in the intricate details and red herrings that Pynchon laces into The Crying of Lot 49 there was overall theme that always seemed to be out of my grasp during my reading. It was only after I was able to take a step back from the reading that I was able to see that my own confusion and investigation mirrored the protagonist’s confusion and frustration to reach the truth in her investigation.
In Oedipa’s quest for the truth, it became more and more blurred whether she was searching for the truth, whether she was being led on by her ex-boyfriend, or whether she is being paranoid and delusional. As her hunt for clues progresses, Oedipa becomes entranced in the mystery of “Trystero” and her judgment becomes unclear. In this state of mind, it felt like Oedipa was reaching for clues rather than logically deciphering the “clues” as they presented themselves. This was demonstrated in Wharfinger’s response to her about the use of the “Trystero” in the play, when he compared her to desire to the way “Puritans are about the Bible. So hung up with words, words”. Pynchon speaks to the reader with this line as well, by noting how often when someone is looking for “truth” they often misinterpret “words” or decide only to see what they want to see. With the countless symbols and metaphors that Pynchon placed inside Lot 49, I often felt like Oedipa, desperately searching for a link between the novel and rhetoric.
The search for truth and the confusion often linked to it, however, was the point that Pynchon was trying to make with Lot 49. Oedipa’s search for the truth about “Trystero” and the reader’s attempts to interpret the symbols and metaphors in the novel, is Pynchon’s clever technique to make the reader empathize with Oedipa’s situation. Furthermore both her name and her search for truth was reminiscent to the protagonist, Oedipus, in the play Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus is similarly driven in his investigation of the truth of his origins. Both characters are driven at first by their logic, and as they get closer and closer to the truth their emotional sides begin to drive their exhaustive investigations. Oedipa’s excitement and anxiousness to find the truth manifests in the end of the novel when she I think about how “[s]he was not sure what she'd do when the bidder revealed himself. She had only some vague idea about causing a scene violent enough to bring the cops into it and find out that way who the man really was.” Her descent into using her pathos in the investigation was partially driven by the degradation of the ethos in her life. The madness of Dr. Hilarius and the drug addiction of her husband are utilized by Pynchon to display how morally upright figures in Oedipa’s life have fallen out of their obligated roles and force her to face her investigation armed only with her own mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment