Between Solitude And Loneliness

When referring to loneliness, we are referring to the pain of being alone. Pretty different from solitude, which expresses the glory of being alone. Being alone doesn’t necessarily refer to suffering, so, is Oedipa’s status quo loneliness or solitude? It is evident that throughout the story, Oedipa has become isolated from other people since the moment she left her husband to execute Pierce’s will. Oedipa’s pure image of complete isolation can be depicted when being alone at the bar: “Oedipa sat, feeling as alone as she ever had, now the only woman, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals” (94). Apart from being alone, we can notice how she is one of the only female characters mentioned in the story thus far. In her engagement of mysteries, Oedipa is surrounded by male figures, fact that leads to a resolution for the boredom and isolation that evinces her. The solution: sex. You might me thinking, “Sex, always sex, is it coincidence that’s always the solution?” The question is, is it a solution or a new problem?

In this novel in particular, sexual affairs are seen as a more common act than usually depicted nowadays. I didn’t live in the sixties but I deny the fact that a married woman would go and have sex with strangers just for the fun of it. Earlier in the book we saw how she had sex with Metzger the same day she met him. Once again in this chapter, John Nefastis invites her to have sex with him, but she denies. Hence, sex is portrayed as being a way to avoid boredom rather than to achieve sexual satisfaction. To Oedipa, her isolation leads her to sexual affairs which lead to the withdrawal from companions like her husband, physician, and God: “Story of my life, she thought, Mucho won’t talk to me, Hilarius won’t listen, Clerk Maxwell didn’t even look at me, and this group, God knows. Despair came over her” (94). We can infer that Oedipa is embracing the consequences of being alone. But it seems by her actions, and by Pynchon’s prose, that she is continuing her progression. After being overwhelmed by the prospect of so many possibilities, so many truths, she comes to an understanding that this ambiguity allows her the freedom of choice, to decide which truth will be hers to pursue. In the end she is alone, embracing loneliness or solitude?

The Paranoia Of Having All The Facts

I haven’t seen so far in my short account of reading, a story that isn’t based on the development of a main character. Maybe you might be thinking, “Oh poor guy, he doesn’t know a thing about literature” or even “Ah, this blog sounds boring, I’d better go and read Duarte’s”. You are free to do that, honestly, her blogs are much better. Anyways, let me continue with my argument. A story always bases its context on the development of a central character. We can see how Don Quixote centralizes with Don Quixote’s development, Slaughterhouse Five with Billy Pilgrim, Candide with Candide, A Clockwork Orange with Alex, Nineteen Eighty-Four with Winston Smith, MacBeth with Macbeth, etc. Even if these characters are protagonists, antagonists, or anti heroes in their respective contexts, their development alters the development of the story.

When relating it to The Crying Of Lot 49, we can surmise that Oedipa (its central character) has a vast effect on the development of the story itself. At this height of the story we can identify pure paranoia in her way of acting: “Everyting she saw, smelled, dreamed, remembered, would somehow come to be woven into The Tristero” (64). The sentence can be interpreted as being a whole metaphor for paranoia in general. To Oedipa, every single anomaly might mean something. A fact which becomes quite ironic taking into account that she called Miles a paranoid, when she herself is ten miles past paranoia. This state of paranoia leads the construction of sentences and paragraphs to be complete strays of Oedipa’s thoughts. To the reader, it’s like being inside Oedipa’s head, where every time an event is introduced, a whole stream of thoughts follow.

For example, we can see this relationship of event/stream of thoughts when she reads bronze historical marker at Fangoso Lagoons: “…The only other clue was a cross, traced by one of the victims in the dust… A cross? Or the initial T? The same stuttered by Niccolò in The Courier’s Tragedy” (71). These side thoughts might have an important influence in the development on the story’s outcome later on. Oedipa’s paranoia leads the reader to believe that she is starting to see things that are not there, which reminded me of Theseus’ lines in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/Are of imagination all compact:/ One sees more devils than vast hell can hold” (V. i. 7-9). In reference to this lines, Oedipa I seeing “more devils than vast hell can hold”. To her, every single anomaly in an everyday life is part of a conspiracy. This sensation of paranoia makes the reader also believe that everything will finally come to be connected with this conspiracy. It might be true that it will in the end connect, or maybe it’s just a smokescreen created by this vast sensation.

The Play Within The Play: A Mirror Of The Story's Essence

When mentioned within the book, The Courier’s Tragedy reminded me of two texts I’ve had the chance to read previously: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Slaughterhouse-Five. We can recall from Shakespeare’s play the fact of “the play within the play”, where the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe is performed within the play. Meanwhile, Pynchon alludes to this piece in a similar manner that Vonnegut did in his own work. Here, Miles refers to it as “the same kind of kinky thing, you know. Bones of lost battalion in lake fished up, turned into charcoal” (48), creating a similar effect to the way Elliot Rosewater would refer to The Brothers Karamazov amongst other novels within the novel. Interestingly enough, the play reflects similar themes and issues as The Crying Of Lot 49. In his novel, Pynchon is constantly satirizing communication, which indeed is an issue present in this “play within the play”.

The events in The Courier’s Tragedy mirror those in the larger story, creating a similar effect to that of The Brothers Karamazov in Slaughterhouse-Five, or Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The connection becomes evident at the conclusion of Act IV of the play when Niccolò says: “No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,/ Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero” (58). Trystero might have echoed in Oedipa’s mind the same amount of times a déjà vu echoes in yours, or even mine. It’s quite ironic that Oedipa, who had entered the play with thoughts about Trystero and not charcoaled bones, encounters with the term. The reader itself is in a similar position to that of Oedipa: he knows not about the whole mystery of Trystero. It’s interesting how everything connects to everything at this point: the story to the play, the play to the story, the play to Oedipa, Oedipa to the reader. Still, a new mystery is present to the reader: a mirror reflecting the story, a play inducing a mystery, and a play within the play.

Communication: The Most Powerful Drug Used By Mankind

Throughout history, humanity has arranged various ways to communicate. Since old little Lucy stepped on Northern Africa, communication has been a technique embraced by the thousands of following generations in order to convey ideas and feelings through voice, writing, or sound. We’ve seen communication through shapes in tablets, encryptions in pyramid walls, singed poetry, letters, songs, TV broadcast, books, and off course, the internet, which permits me to communicate with you. Through the Crying Of Lot 49, Pynchon evokes communication as a central figure of the plot itself. Since the beginning of the story we notice Oedipa’s reception of a letter: communication. After the reception of the letter, Oedipa undergoes a process of thought which involves television, fairytales, God, and the state of being drunk. These coincidentally are all related to communication in one way or the other.

The scene at the hotel room between Oedipa and Metzger is a perfect example of how television and the state of being drunk play a role in communication. In common culture, of course, when being drunk you feel things don’t make sense. To Oedipa, the sensation is no different: “She felt drunk. It occurred to her, for no reason, that the plucky trio might not get out after all. She had no way to tell how long the movie had to run. She looked at her watch, but it had stopped. “This is absurd,” she said, “of course they’ll get out”” (22). In this state of asceticism, Oedipa undergoes a process of uncovering in the bet they establish, were Oedipa will have to take one article of clothing every time she loses. Pynchon might have used this scene as just an example of how communication might affect our senses, or the fact of Oedipa taking her clothes off can be a complete metaphor of the story itself. We have noticed that since she received the letter in page 1 of this novel, every page has been like taking an article of clothing off: a new mystery is uncovered, a new hint is given to the reader.