Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, is set in California during the 1960s in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in the midst of the Vietnam War. It is also a period of counterculture and social revolution when drug use becomes popularized and sexuality is explored. This historical context is evident in the novel as the main character, Oedipa, attempts to establish order and meaning in life. This essay will explore how Pynchon uses Oedipa as a projection of increased paranoia during this historical age. Using Brian L. Keeley’s article, “Of Conspiracy Theories,” I will support the notion that the first five chapters of Pynchon’s novel is a cautionary tale about subscribing to conspiracy theories, with Oedipa as the example of a conspiracy theorist.
Pynchon intricately weaves absurdist troupes into his novel to support how the absurd is involved in becoming a conspiracy theorist. Most significant is Oedipa’s exhaustive search for meaning. She becomes irrational in this search, unraveling threads of conspiracy theories that never seem to reach a definite conclusion and, instead, lead only to more questions for Oedipa and the reader. Linda W. Wagner describes the search in this way:
The discovery in which Oedipa is being led is…that of living, as a person, a human being, in a culture which is already paranoid beyond belief (the very act of speaking, casually, to someone is fraught with danger; with the act of writing, even letters, one assumes far greater risks). Pynchon’s focus falls as often, and with as much interest, on the culture which he observes. Pynchon is creating an America…in a spirit not unlike that of Fitzgerald forty years before when he created The Great Gatsby. (Wa...
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...s she believes in. Subscribing to one theory results in a new thread to follow, until she wonders if there is any meaning at all and if this search will ever end. Similarly, in a close reading of the novel, readers also travel this journey, a journey in which readers experience the irrationality and disorientation that comes with conspiracies. The characteristics Keeley describes in his article are reflected in Pynchon’s novel, suggesting to readers to proceed with caution when faced with conspiracy theories.
Works Cited
Keeley, Brian L. "Of Conspiracy Theories." The Journal of Philosophy 96.3 (1999): 109-26.
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Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Perennial Classics, 1966. Print.
Wagner, Linda W. "A Note on Oedipa the Roadrunner." The Journal of Narrative Technique 4.2
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America’s well-being was shattered on November 22, 1963, the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Although authorities arrested Lee Harvey Oswald as the president’s killer, a multitude of citizens in our country believe a conspiracy was involved, and that Oswald was not the lone assassin. The film JFK encompasses facts that support conspiratorial actions being part of JFK’s assassination. These facts support a disparate opinion and gives viewers and movie characters the chance to formulate their own opinions instead of blindly following that of another. In JFK, Oliver Stone displays certain events in different perspectives in order to prevent blind following from inattention.
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 1308-1311. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Bernard Crick’s criticism of George Orwell’s 1984 is, in my opinion, incorrect. I believe that 1984 is a strong book that uses fear to provokes people to resist.
middle of paper ... ... The. C., C. "The Oedipus Complex Theory Explained in Hamlet." Gather. Then.
5 John Johnston. "Paranoia as a Semiotic Regime in The Crying of Lot 49,"New Essays on the Crying of Lot 49 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.
Oedipus the King. Tranlsted by Stephen Berg and Diskin Clay. In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.
The issues of destiny, predetermination, and foreknowledge are raised as problems, not as dogma. How much control do we have over the shape of our lives? How much of what happens to us is due to heredity, to accidents, to sheer luck. . . . These are the questions that the play raises, and it raises them as questions. It shows us men and women who are both powerful and helpless, often at the same moment. Oedipus embodies the human condition. . . . (75-76).
Worthen, W. B. (2000). Oedipus the King. The Harcourt Brace anthology of drama (3rd ed., pp.
Vogel, Dan. "The Mask of Oedipus Tyranos," in The Three Masks of American Tragedy. Contemporary Literary
To the uninitiated, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. Working his way through "Greenleaf," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," or "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the new reader feels an existential hollowness reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger; O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.
Dodds, E. R., (1966). On misunderstanding Oedipus. In Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D., Literature an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama and writing (6th ed.). (pp. 900-901). Boston: Pearson
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....."Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs..." These words begin the wondrous passage that introduces us to the world of Thomas Pynchon's latest masterpiece, Mason & Dixon. In an obvious parody of "A screaming comes across the sky," the opening of Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon sets the mood and pace for the rest of the novel. In contrast to the mindless pleasures, hopeless desperation, and ubiquitous death that dominate virtually every page of his apocalyptic earlier work, this novel begins with a joyful snowball fight between children on the streets of eighteenth-century Philadelphia. Indeed, the rest of the novel generally maintains this playful and happy tone. Unlike the sexually disturbed and socially displaced isolates that make up Pynchon's cast of prior heroes (or more aptly "anti-heroes"), the book focuses on the relationship of two normal men, Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason, who form an incredible bond of friendship. Needless to say, this has lead critics to wonder precisely what has happened to Pynchon in the last twenty years. Has marriage softened the author? Is this a "kinder, gentler" Pynchon for the nineties? To some extent, the fact that critics are still scrambling to explain the extreme differences between his previous work and Mason & Dixon may explain the relative paucity of literary criticism available on the new book to date.
This essay will illustrate the types of characters depicted in Sophocles’ tragic drama, Oedipus Rex, whether static or dynamic, flat or round, and whether protrayed through the showing or telling technique.
O’Brien, Micheal. “Introduction.” 20th Centruy Interpretations of Oedipus Rex. Ed. Micheal O'Brien. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 8-10. Print.