Megan Rippey
While reading Pynchon’s The
Crying of Lot 49, I considered many of the topics that we discussed in
class. One of the most striking
narratives comes as Oedipa describes her tower of entrapment. This tower serves as reason for the reader to
believe that she is on a quest for meaning, just as we are on a (vain) quest
for meaning within the text. While meaning may not necessarily be as easy to
come by as one might like, there is certainly merit to many of the themes that
are repeated throughout the work as a whole.
I was often struck by Oedipa’s paranoia, and the representation of activism in comparison to the middle-age housewife’s passivity.
While Oedipa displays symptoms of paranoia countless times,
we only see a handful of examples of the occurrence of paranoia in others. One important character who experiences
paranoia is Dr. Hilarius. Hilarius
chooses to bare arms and actively hide in order to defend himself from the
omnipresent “them”. Oedipa, however;
takes a passive approach to the fabrications which result from her
paranoia. She reasons with herself and
often times discredits her intuition.
The distinction between the two characters’ paranoia directly correlates
to Pynchon’s commentary on gender roles and the passive white, middle-class,
heterosexual, woman. I believe that
through taking an active role in his paranoia, Hilarius has a more blatant, and
therefore, more manageable identified state of paranoia within the confines of normative
society. Oedipa, who passively falls
deeper into her general state of paranoia, is not as able to actively conform
to society’s notions of paranoia, which only isolates her further.
As we discussed the representations of race throughout the
course of the novel, especially seen in Winthrop Tremaine’s dialogue, I began
to think of the youth of America during the 1960s. As I reread the passage, I think about
Oedpia’s lack of reaction to Tremaine’s language. With further consideration, I think that
Pynchon effectively demonstrates youth in revolt (demonstrations, protests,
etc.) and the passivity of the white, middle-class, middle-aged
individuals. While characters such as
Oedipa may have strongly disagreed with the status quo, they made little
attempt to do anything to change it.
I like this idea of comparing different forms of agency in the novel. The difficulty with Hilarius is that he is, of course, insane. But you might think further about your last line as perhaps central to the novel's overall argument--are people all talk and little action?
ReplyDelete