I have to admit that I was eager to start and finish this chapter of “The Crying of Lot 49” because I knew it was the last chapter and I had hopes that it being the final opportunity to make some sense of the book, would clear up the entire purpose of the story. Thankfully, it did, and I now understand why we discussed, “meaningless vs. full of meaning,” “everything is connected vs. nothing is connected,” and so on. Within the last few paragraphs of the entire book, the reader is essentially informed that there has been one person controlling all of Oedipa’s actions (persuading her to go on this journey) and she is finally given the opportunity to see who that person is. Unfortunately, Pynchon leaves his readers on a cliff hanger and we never get to see who’s been leading her on through this practical joke the whole time! But at least with this knowledge, we as readers now know that the “Trystero story” essentially did not mean anything to the heart of the story, Pynchon rather created a mystery story, with deeper meaning found in the purpose of Oedipa as a character and her meaning of life (problems, losing her friends and family to this search, drugs, and failure to communicate).
Although much of this chapter seemed disconnected until the very end tied the whole book together, there were a few passages that stood out to me. On page 126, Oedipa reflects on how pathetic she has come to be, “...my husband, on LSD, gropes like a child further and further into the rooms and endless rooms of the elaborate candy house of himself and away, hopelessly away, from what has passed, I was hoping forever, for love; my one extra-marital fella has eloped with a depraved 15-year-old; my best guide back to the Trystero has taken a Brody. Where am I?” Even though this entire time Oedipa’s character has somewhat annoyed me because of her naivety and lack of realizing what is truly important in life (losing her friends and family to this nonsense), this passage actually evoked some pity in me. Many aspects of her life were truly falling apart to the point that she couldn’t even ground herself anymore, which made me feel bad for her for the very first time.
The second passage that stood out to me was on page 137, during which is seems as though Oedipa is giving up on her journey. Although we do find out, by the end of the book, that she continues far enough to discover who has put her to “all of this,” this passage, “…She knew that if she went back to Vesperhaven House to talk again to old Mr Thoth about his grandfather, she would find that he too had died. She new she out to write to K. da Chingado, publisher of the unaccountable paperback Courier’s Tragedy, but she didn’t, and never asked Bortz if he had, either…” implies that she has just had enough with doing so much and just leading herself into more confusion. What I didn’t understand at the time of reading this was why she would come this far (almost to the end of the book) and then just give up completely. Ultimately, we discover that she does not give up, so this was actually cleared up for me upon finishing the chapter.
The final passage that I found interesting was on page 140, “Meaning what? That Bortz, along with Metzger, Cohen, Driblette, Koteks, the tattooed sailor in San Francisco, the W.A.S.T.E. carriers she’d seen—that all of them were Pierce Inverarity’s mean? Bought? Or loyal, for free, for fun, to some grandiose practical joke he’d cooked up, all for her embarrassment, or terrorizing, or moral improvement?” This thought that the entire journey that Oedipa has been on to find the Trystero was indeed a prank being played on her reminded me of a movie that I watched in my Psychology class in high school called, “The Truman Show.” My immediate relation to this sort of fictional world that Oedipa may have been placed in was the thought that maybe “The Truman Show” was based lightly off of “The Crying of Lot 49.”
Words I was not familiar with:
Infanticide: the killing of a human infant
Tabernacle: a tent sanctuary used by the Jews to carry the Ark of the Covenant
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