Peter Barry says of the cultural materialist approach to literature that “it is difficult to know how to ‘place’ writing of this kind” (189). By “writing” Barry refers to cultural materialist criticism itself—not the work being criticized—but it is probably safe to assume that the analysis properly reflects the analyzed in this respect. It is certainly arguable that Thomas Pynchon’s THE CRYING OF LOT 49 qualifies as “difficult to place,” and this may be its only legitimate connection offered to a cultural materialist reading. Yet similarities arise between the text and the theory that suggest, at least on some level, a harmonious ideal. Of course, should such a comparison exist, it is only by the theory’s compatibility to the text, it being the work critiqued and, besides that, having originated much earlier than the theory. But there is value in contrasting the two as if they are more than just analysis and analyzed, but two products of a literary history whose similarities point toward or influence ongoing likenesses. Such a likeness is their contribution to an overall theme of almost fairy tale-style escapism.
A fundamental start is to examine the use of Shakespeare in both situations. This may seem odd without an understanding of its intrinsic contribution to both the novel and the theory. In LOT 49, Oedipa Maas encounters a number of eccentrics and organizations that all hint at involvement in some sort of mail system conspiracy, not the least of which is a Jacobean play called THE COURIER’S TRAGEDY by Richard Wharfinger. The play and playwright are of course fictional, but what’s more, they are blatantly—caustically—related to Shakespeare’s HAMLET. “Oedipa found herself after five minutes sucked utterly...
... middle of paper ...
... structure to which they belong. This structure, in its very essence, seeks to “project” in a variety of ways new worlds by which to interpret reality.
Works Cited
Baldick, Chris. “Structuralism.” OXFORD CONCISE DICTIONARY OF
LITERARY TERMS. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Barry, Peter. “Structuralism.” BEGINNING THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION
TO LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY. 2nd edition. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2002.
Pynchon, Thomas. THE CRYING OF LOT 49. Perennial Classics
edition. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
Scott, Sir Walter. IVANHOE. World Classics paperback edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Snicket, Lemony. A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS BOOK THE SIXTH:
THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2002.
The work as a whole seems to be a study of the nature of the mystery and how its discovery brings out the true identity of Oedipus. The clues involved in Oedipus’ puzzle surface a dark truth about his past and the fate. that he simply cannot shake the fact that he is the murderer and is indeed controlled by the Gods, not as powerful as them. When Kreon returns from Delphi, he tells Oedipus that he must “avenge”. the murderers of King Laios.
In D.H. Lawerence's short story, “The Rocking Horse Winner”, and Grahm Greene's “The Destructors, there are many truths to consider. Although these two stories are considerably different, the message is the same. Whether in a life-like story, such as “The Destructors”, or a fantacy, like “The Rocking Horse Winner”, the seeds of materialism are planted and nourished in lives of the characters. The aspects of materialism in these two stories develop desired conclusions by its characters. In order to understand the similar message of Greene short story “The Destructors” and Lawerence's “The Rocking Horse Winner”, one must scrutinize the various aspects of each story.
The most basic premise of this chapter is that works that are categorized within the adaptation and/or appropriation genre are inherently political, simply by the nature of their production. In other words, it might be simpler to say that original works of literature, in the case of this discussion particularly those from the literary canon, are often products of the culture they are written within. The author cannot help but to exert their own ideological agenda upon the text, though it is a job left to the reader to locate and interpret the clues to the agenda that are left in between the lines. The development of an adaptation is an extension of that process. By reinterpreting a text, for the sake of making significant alteration to the
I am going to summarize and analyze the novel named ‘’The Crying a Lot’’. This novel belongs to Thomas Pynchon. I will try to analyze this complicated but escapist novel.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
Guerin, Wilfred L., et al., eds. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1992. Lacy, Norris J. and Geoffrey Ashe. The Arthurian Handbook of the.
164-69. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 341. Detroit: Gale, 2013.Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 5 May 2014.
The Crying of Lot 49 offers two journeys into the text: that of it's protagonist Oedipa, and that which the reader is forced to take with her. His brilliant use of detail and word plays blur the lines between the two. The main factor in this journey is chaos, here referred to by its’ more scientific name entropy. Oedipa and the reader get lost in a system of chaos and the task of deciphering the clues within the intricate system. The reader has no choice but to become part of this system through cleverly employed tactics Pychon uses to draw one in.
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
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).
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 125-156.
During the March 1986 edition of the Journal of Modern Literature, Lee Clark Mitchell of Princeton University opens his article “‘Keeping His Head’: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s ‘To Build a Fire’” by critiquing naturalism’s style of storytelling. Mitchell claims naturalism as a slow, dull, and plain way of capturing an audience; and Jack London is the epitome of this description. Mitchell states, “[London’s] very methods of composition prompt a certain skepticism; the speed with which he wrote, his suspiciously childish plots…have all convinced readers to ignore the technical aspects of h...
Upon reading the play, there is an apparent class structure found throughout. In Oedipus Tyrannus, two mai...
The play "Oedipus Rex" is a very full and lively one to say the least. Everything a reader could ask for is included in this play. There is excitement, suspense, happiness, sorrow, and much more. Truth is the main theme of the play. Oedipus cannot accept the truth as it comes to him or even where it comes from. He is blinded in his own life, trying to ignore the truth of his life. Oedipus will find out that truth is rock solid. The story is mainly about a young man named Oedipus who is trying to find out more knowledge than he can handle. The story starts off by telling us that Oedipus has seen his moira, his fate, and finds out that in the future he will end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Thinking that his mother and father were Polybos and Merope, the only parents he knew, he ran away from home and went far away so he could change his fate and not end up harming his family. Oedipus will later find out that he cannot change fate because he has no control over it, only the God's can control what happens. Oedipus is a very healthy person with a strong willed mind who will never give up until he gets what he wants. Unfortunately, in this story these will not be good trait to have.
...up the question of the value of truth, and whether the pain of knowing an awful truth is more important than the bliss of ignorance. This also applies to Death of a Salesman: while Oedipus chooses to pursue the truth, Jocasta and the Lomans try to live in naïveté and not face reality. The play also questions the increasingly proud leaders of the Athenian society who challenge the higher powers, i.e. men against the gods, when Oedipus reviles the oracles. The gods, he indicates, will always triumph when men, using their intellect, oppose them. One of the themes is that the course of things is partly based on the character's actions but mostly fate.