In Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49, we meet Oedipa Maas; she travels down a rabbit hole of her own making, like Lewis Carrols Alice, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Where Alice comes to self realization, Oedipa’s life ends up falling apart as she becomes more and more isolated and ends up with no closure. She goes through her life, in this story, assigning importance to things that may not be important at all, making a picture into a puzzle. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is thrown into situations in a strange world where she believes she can make sense of it all but always ends up frustrated. She is given puzzles to solve comparative to Oedipa’s clues for her great mystery. Some of these puzzles were the Caucus run with the mouse and other animals, the Mad Hatter’s riddle and the croquet game at the queen’s castle. All of these puzzles ended with no answers. She unlike Oedipa realizes that there is no logic to be made from any of these situations. She begins to understand that while life may give you situations that may seem familiar and easy to figure out they may have no answer. Oedipa’s failure to understand how characters try to communication with her and really understand her task at hand causes disorder in her own life, which is what, causes her to continue spiraling down her “rabbit hole”. Just like chaos theory it will break her apart into she is at her most simplistic form, alone without closure.
Thomas Pynchon introduces the novel by describing the stereotypical housewife, she goes to Tupperware parties and comes home and cooks dinner and makes drinks for her husband. Clearly no sign of chaos in this situation, much like Alice who becomes bored with her books and d...
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...ich side of the mushroom to eat. Alice doesn’t identify what his direction means and chooses the wrong side once again. The smallest amount of miscommunication can cause drastic change as Alice learns and grows large once again.
Works Cited:
1. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying Of Lot 49 .United States, Harper Collins Publishers 1999. Print. Page 8
2. Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, New York: MacMillan. (1865) (tablet edition) Chapter 6
3. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying Of Lot 49 .United States, Harper Collins Publishers 1999. Print. Page 38
4. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying Of Lot 49 .United States, Harper Collins Publishers 1999. Print. Page 58
5. Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, New York: MacMillan. (1865) (tablet edition)Chapter 9
6. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying Of Lot 49 .United States, Harper Collins Publishers 1999. Print. Page 96
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about a little girl who comes into contact with unpredictable, illogical, basically mad world of Wonderland by following the White Rabbit into a huge rabbit – hole. Everything she experiences there challenges her perception and questions common sense. This extraordinary world is inhabited with peculiar, mystical and anthropomorphic creatures that constantly assault Alice which makes her to question her fundamental beliefs and suffer an identity crisis. Nevertheless, as she woke up from “such a curious dream” she could not help but think “as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been ”.
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Schorer, Mark. "An Indignant and Prophetic Novel." The New York Times Book Review. 12 June (1949) 1,16.
436-441. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Cassel & Bausch. New York: The New York Times.
...n though she struggled to cope with Wonderland at the beginning due to the lack of appropriate methods, the experiential learning with the sizes taught her to solve the problems at hand rationally, logically and with evidence. Armed with this powerful tool, Alice then sets out to resolve her identity crisis by learning about Wonderland independently. She may not have intentionally chosen which topics (i.e. Time) to pursue but the conclusion she reaches is the same in her interactions: Wonderland is governed by irrationality and her rational self cannot come to terms with it. One may argue ‘how is a seven and a half year old capable of such thinking?’ One must note that Wonderland is a dream and because Alice is dreaming, she is capable of it.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Eighth Edition. Vol. 1. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2005
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 has much in common with Don DeLillo's book White Noise. Both novels uncannily share certain types of characters, parts of plot structure and themes. The similarities of these two works clearly indicates a cultural conception shared by two influential and respected contemporary authors.
Although the novel is notorious for its satire and parodies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland main theme is the transition between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, Alice’s adventures illustrate the perplexing struggle between child and adult mentalities as she explores the curious world of development know as Wonderland. From the beginning in the hallway of doors, Alice stands at an awkward disposition. The hallway contains dozens of doors that are all locked. Alice’s pre-adolescent stage parallels with her position in the hallway. Alice’s position in the hallway represents that she is at a stage stuck between being a child and a young woman. She posses a small golden key to ...
...inal realization that she is growing up and that is normal, therefore, she accepts it. In brief, Alice in Wonderland is a book about growing up, and Alice definitely has grown up since the beginning of her journey and she has entered the adolescence phase when she rebels against everyone. Although she is not able to control herself when she gets angry, in other words she is behaving like a normal adolescent, she has gained a new “power” from this confusing experience: being a person with a voice to say something that matters.