How Does Oedipa Struggle Towards Identity
Mac Werther
Mr. Matthews
AP English
30 March 2009
Honorbound
Oedipa’s Struggle Towards Identity in The Crying of Lot 49
The Oxford English Dictionary defines identity as “the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.” Personal identity and, especially, the loss of identity are reoccurring themes in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, as individuals struggle with their own identities, assume multiple identities, or lose any recognizable identity whatsoever. The conflict between society and identity holds great sway in the novel; while societal policy tends towards socialism, or perhaps communism, many …show more content…
…The Demon does what Oedipa must learn to do: consciously resist entropy by sense-making to keep the world bouncing. At [an early stage] in the novel, though, Oedipa is not yet a sensitive… She still views herself as an impotent victim lost in the world’s indifferent and incomprehensible design, and avoids her responsibility to participate in re-creating that design. (84-85)
The first time in the novel Oedipa has an internal conflict, the reader is allowed a look into her troubled mind, one that cannot find its place. Oedipa had also gently conned herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down you hair. When it turned out to be Pierce she’d happily pulled out the pins and curlers and down it tumbled in its whispering, dainty avalanche, only when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass. (Pynchon …show more content…
As the novel progresses and Driblette, the director of The Courier’s Tragedy, kills himself, Oedipa beings to lose faith in society as she loses those closest to her, trying to understand how she can find her place without the supportive cast of characters to which she has become so
Mr. Matthews
AP English
30 March 2009
Honorbound
Oedipa’s Struggle Towards Identity in The Crying of Lot 49
The Oxford English Dictionary defines identity as “the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.” Personal identity and, especially, the loss of identity are reoccurring themes in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, as individuals struggle with their own identities, assume multiple identities, or lose any recognizable identity whatsoever. The conflict between society and identity holds great sway in the novel; while societal policy tends towards socialism, or perhaps communism, many …show more content…
…The Demon does what Oedipa must learn to do: consciously resist entropy by sense-making to keep the world bouncing. At [an early stage] in the novel, though, Oedipa is not yet a sensitive… She still views herself as an impotent victim lost in the world’s indifferent and incomprehensible design, and avoids her responsibility to participate in re-creating that design. (84-85)
The first time in the novel Oedipa has an internal conflict, the reader is allowed a look into her troubled mind, one that cannot find its place. Oedipa had also gently conned herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down you hair. When it turned out to be Pierce she’d happily pulled out the pins and curlers and down it tumbled in its whispering, dainty avalanche, only when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass. (Pynchon …show more content…
As the novel progresses and Driblette, the director of The Courier’s Tragedy, kills himself, Oedipa beings to lose faith in society as she loses those closest to her, trying to understand how she can find her place without the supportive cast of characters to which she has become so