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Crying Of Lot 49 - School Essays

Crying Of Lot 49

There are two levels of apprehension to The : that of the characters in the book, whose perception is limited to the text, and that of the reader, who has the ability to look at the world from outside of it. A recurring theme in the novel is the phenomenon of chaos, also called entropy. Both the reader and Oedipa have the same problems of facing the chaos around them. Through various methods, Pynchon imposes a fictional world of chaos on the world of the reader, a world already full of confusions. As readers, we are faced with the same uncertainty and complication of the mystery that the characters are involved in. As the mysteries unfold, an understanding of the characters leads to ...

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executing a will, is to find meaning in a life dominated by assaults on people¡¦s perceptions through the use of drugs and the muting of communications. Entangled in this chaos, Oedipa has to do what the Maxwell¡¦s Demon does: sort useful facts from useless ones. Pynchon involves his audience in that they also have to interpret countless symbols and metaphors to arrive at a meaning.
One of the most effective techniques that Pychon uses to involve the reader in his fictional world is his use of details. His mixing of the specific history of Thurn and Taxis in his plot serves to overburden the reader with details that seems to have no relation to the story at hand. ¡§ From the same plastic folder he now tweezed what looked like an old Ferman stamp, with the figures 1/4 in the centre, the word Freimarke at the top, and along the right-hand margin the legend Thurn und Taxis¡¨ (p.96). These specific details of history unite the reader¡¦s real world with the fictional one ...

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an indirect message questioning the very exsistance of meaning. This leads to the next uniting factor, paranoia.
One aspect that unites Oedipa and the audience is the state of paranoia. Unlike the Maxwell¡¦s Demon, inside a closed system, the reader and Oedipa are exposed to pynchon¡¦s fictional system, which is constantly expanding to include more and more aspects of contemporary America. Being inefficient sorters, both the reader and Oedipa are in a state of confusion, or paranoia. Paranoia, not defined to mean a type of mental illness, refers to the tendency to find meaning in symbols which may or may not have any meaning. At the climax, Oedipa sees the muted post horn ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 6/11/2005 02:42:12 PM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1322
Pages: 5

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