The Crying of Lot 49 (Chapter 1)

Mocking the Worlds Reality

After reading the first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 I realized the novel had no true meaning, Pynchon was writing a tangled story through which he truly intended to mock and ridicule the typical life of a housewife during the twentieth century. In the novel he uses complex vocabulary and his sentences are not fluid, some of them being just a rattle on of unrelated ideas. He also plays a lot with language, using specific words to create irony on the characters personalities or on how they act.

At the beginning of the book we are introduced to a summer afternoon in which Oedipa, the main character, is in a Tupperware party. This allows us to interpret the fact that she didn’t work; therefore she personifies the typical lifestyle of a conventional family during the XX century, the time during which the book was published (1965). I immediately related this idea to the TV-series Desperate Housewife’s in which the lifes of four contemporary desperate housewife’s are told. Pynchon describes Oedipa as a confused and desperate housewife that is uncertain on how she will manage the fact of being the legal executer of the estate of an ex-boyfriend of hers which deceased named Pierce Inverarity. She returns home where she finds her husband, Mucho Mass, constantly whining of his job at the radio station, together they don’t seem to communicate, tolerate each other nor find a way to solve their issues.

After reading about the characters I noticed how the author makes fun of them by naming them ironically. For instance Dr. Hilarius, Oedipas shrink, is mentally unstable, he uses his patients as lab rats and experiments with drugs on them. Honestly there is nothing funny with a psychologist that manipulates his clients, but the fact that Oedipa is trying to find answers and solve personal matters by consulting him, makes it ironic and hilarious. Pynchon also uses irony by naming the lawyer Roseman which fits perfectly with his personality. On this first chapter we are informed that Roseman flirts with Oedipa and even proposes an escape with her, therefore he is sort of romantic which we can relate greatly with roses, part of his name. As a whole I believe Pynchon is trying to mock certain professions such as psychologists and lawyers. These occupations are supposed to have great prestige and be seriously taken but in the novel they do completely opposite to what is expected of them.

Another language twist comes along in Mucho Mass name as well as job, before hand he used to work at a used cars sales lot, but he couldn’t managed it any longer so he became a radio broadcaster in a radio named KCUF. If we look closely the radio name spells fuck if read backwards. Can this have any specific meaning or could it be a play on words of the author to trick us? Mucho Mass name is also a language play since it can be interpreted in two ways. One is Mucho meaning a lot and Mass meaning more, the other may mean Mass as in how much matter there is in an object. Either of this interpretations still has no specific meaning to me, maybe it will develop as I continue to read the novel. If we do an overall analysis we can see how every characters name relates to something else, maybe an ironic meaning, or perhaps just a distraction created by the author, inclusively we could relate Oedipas name with Sophocles Oedipus.

Another very interesting aspect about the novel is the relationship found between Oedipa and Pierce. As soon as she receives the letter notifying her of Pierces will she begins thinking about the television, God, drunkenness and fray tales. “Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible.” (pg. 1) She suddenly began having all this memories of her relationship with Pierce and even reminded herself the last time they talked was in a three in the morning call by Pierce in which he talked in different languages and acted as someone else. Once again this comes to show the lack of communication and language barriers among people presented in the novel.

The end of the chapter was also very curious since it used Rapunzels story to demonstrate how Oedipa was feeling. The fact that she relates herself with Rapunzel makes me feel she lived an unhappy live; feeling trapped somewhere she didn’t belong, and couldn’t find a way to get out. This is a situation with which most of us can relate since we constantly find ourselves in a place where we don’t feel comfortable nor identified with and what is most difficult is letting ourselves out of those situations. Oedipa is feeling trapped in a relationship and as a desperate housewife and she feels her way out may be when a knight may come to save her, in this instance Pierce. But his death and the lack of communication become such a barrier that Rapunzels her becomes a wig and Oedipas fantasy is destroyed when Pierce falls on his ass.

The Crying of Lot 49 relates closely to Slaughterhouse-Five due to the fact that in both of these complex novels the authors are searching for an understanding of life. Both Billy Pilgrim and Oedipa Mass are confused in concern to what they want from life or their interpretations toward it, both novels I believe tell the journey of the characters searching for their identity in the world.