Fantasy State of Paranoia

In reading the final chapters of The Crying of Lot 49, the theme of fantasy arose in regard to Oedipa’s fear of what was real and what was false. This fear ties into the central theme of paranoia, or in this case a fantasy that allows her to think differently than the meaning she initially has in the novel, a monotonous suburban housewife in which she feels entrapped. In Oedipa’s quest, the true meaning she looks for constantly becomes altered first looking for an escape, then trying to uncover the symbol presented at The Scope, and finally for Trystero which eventually confuses Oedipa more and more within her own confusion of self and paranoia. Therefore, unless Oedipa lived within the true essence of her own paranoia the quest becomes a fantasy since the answers constantly are altered and eventually the entire system she was searching to uncover ultimately seems to be a labyrinth with no true way out.

            Before heading back to Kinneret, the narrator describes her desire to talk with Dr. Hilarius about her recently collected information and a desire for him to let her know what is  real: “she wanted it all to be a fantasy – some clear result of her several wounds, needs, dark doubles. She wanted Hilarius to tell her she was some kind of a nut and needed a rest . . . she also wanted to know why the chance of its being real should menace her so”(Pynchon 107). Oedipa is clearly afraid of the real, of what lies outside the typical norm of paranoia around her. Therefore I believe in the final chapters, Pynchon leaves Hilarius to act as a contradiction to the apparent normative status of the other characters: paranoid. Hilarius admits to have never taken LSD which he prescribed to most of his patients that were dealing with paranoia: “I chose to remain in relative paranoia, where at least I know who I am and who the others are” (111). Hilarius decides that amidst the paranoia in the suburban culture he lives in, he will simply stay in his own space without influence from drugs. Pynchon slips in his own notion that everyone lives in some state of paranoia whether it is visibly noticeable or just a personal state. Ironically, unlike the other characters, the main prescriber to combat the so-called  “paranoia” does not even take the drugs to resist it; instead he tries to understand his own meaning. Similarly, Hilarius begs her to live in her fantasy when she begs him to reason her out of it: “what else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to others. You begin to cease to be” (113). Hilarius tries to make her understand that by rejecting her idea of the fantasy she lives within, she in turn gives into the paranoia that surrounds her and will be unable to find the meaning in a clear and reasonable state. I would argue that this idea of paranoia that Hilarius represents, is his way of urging the reader to not give into their paranoia but to try to understand it for what it is, since that makes up part of an individuals meaning.