The Crying Of Lot 49 Adarsh Ghosh

The Crying of Lot 49, was a book that challenged the mind and has made me think in ways I have not done before. In the book, Pynchon guides the reader through the journey that Oedipa, the main character, takes to find her true goal in life. The story though shows a much deeper idea. Oedipa starts very paranoid and having no life long objective and in her attempt to find an objective she ends up in a more distraught paranoia. I believe that Pynchon was trying to convey the message that there is no way to escape Paranoia. Paranoia as defined by Bersani, is finding patterns from nonexistent sources.
Oedipa, a very intelligent woman who has an endless mental capacity, suffers from paranoia. Her mind is filled with countless memories of Texts, Traces and Trash As Assamans Text defined it; Trash is the remnants of traces that used to be the full on text. Oedipa had attempted to use her brainpower for sorting; arguing that her ability to sort requires energy, thus not defying the second law of thermodynamics. Pynchon makes the reader realize that there is a deeper meaning to the book when he describes Oedipas minds interpretation on the painting. Seeking helplessly to fill the voids.(Chapter 1) This is how the tapestry was described; moreover it c also describes the way Oedipa thinks. She aimlessly makes connections with irrelevant topics in life and somehow cannot feel accomplished. It seems that Oedipa may also have a multiple personality disorder because she occupies many subject positions. First off, Oedipa has submissive and even oriental traits, for she is very naive and submissive. She then takes a more attempt at independence, especially when she attempts to uncover the truth about the Peter Pinguid Socitey. Oedipas mind is an extreme endless feedback loop; her mind takes the trash and attempts to make connections. Having this ability coupled with the fact that she is in the 1960s has limited her ability to develop both as a character in a novel and a person that we can visualize. It seems as if Pynchon made the book only somewhat enjoyable only if you could connect with Oedipa. He also connected the current world issues at the time by making allusions to The Beetles and drugs such as LSD. In her quest for her goal in life, Oedipa finds mysterious symbols and uncovers a cryptic mail system that copies the United States Postal Service. In personal life, most paths that people take usually take them right back to where they started. This is seen especially when people attempt to tackle a very challenging problem. Oedipas path revealed that there will be times in which one has found their destiny but most of those times they are just false alarms. Pynchon demonstrated Oedipas path of paranoia on purpose because if he did not over exaggerate it, readers would not be willing to analyze their own life situations.