Mistakes in Making Meaning

Throughout The Crying of Lot 49, the narration follows Oedipa’s futile attempts at finding meaning in her life. She is depicted as a white suburban housewife who regularly tends her garden, attends Tupperware parties, and prepares dinner for her husband. Although her life seems “typical” of suburban housewives, Oedipa experiences frequent psychotic episodes and hallucinations. After being named executor of her ex-boyfriend’s estate, she recalls viewing a painting of young girls trapped in a tower and “Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried” (11). This sudden outburst of emotion illuminates Oedipa’s ability to connect with the girls trapped in the tower. She herself feels trapped in her own tower, unable to gain enough understanding and agency to be free. Her lack of agency is also explained by the narrator when he lists her life options: “she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disc jockey” (12).  The narrator recognizes that her only option in life is passivity. No option presented involves Oedipa gaining agency and finding some sort of “truth” in her life. This listing of Oedipa’s options of insignificant pursuits is an example of the narrator’s underlying satirical tone. If the narrator treats her quest in a serious manner but has this underlying tone, how is the reader supposed to view Oedipa in her quest to find meaning?  The reader could either parallel the experience of searching for meaning in this piece of literature to Oedipa’s experience of searching for meaning in her life or view her as an example of how not to look for meaning and how not to partake in useless endeavors.

                In the end of the novel, Oedipa is sitting at the crying of lot 49 waiting for a mysterious bidder to appear. Her actions throughout the novel have not given her any capacity to gain agency. Although she has come so close to discovering who the bidder is and all the clues are coming together, she still is unable to discover anything important. Her entire quest has basically led to nothing and Oedipa is unable to make meaning in this world. This failure of Oedipa’s can again be connected to the reader’s failure in finding a connective meaning in this novel, but it is more likely that Oedipa’s failure illuminates the fact that she is a poor quester.  The presentation of Oedipa through the narration shows her quest as similar to the readers, but the reader should take note of her failures and not make the same mistakes in making meaning.