Crying in Lot 49 Chapters 1 and 2

“The Crying of Lot 49” emphasizes the motif of disillusionment.  During the 1960s, the Beatnik generation arose.  People felt marginalized and fooled by the concept of the American Dream, as hard work did not necessarily lead to success.  However, success was not confined to the definition of material wealth.  Instead, success revolved around finding happiness.  Mucho Maas, Oedipa’s husband, struggles to find happiness in a job.  He holds several jobs, feeling like an outsider at the car trade-in shop, and at the KCUF radio station.  “But the endless rituals of trade-in, week after week, never got as far as violence or blood, and so were too plausible for the impressionable Mucho to take for long.  Even if enough exposure to the unvarying gray sickness had somehow managed to immunize him, he could still never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as futureless, automotive projection of somebody else’s life.  As if it were the most natural thing.  To Mucho it was horrible” (5). Mucho adopts a pessimistic outlook, using the car junk shop as an analogy to life’s shortcomings.  He describes the world as being filled with a “gray sickness”.  The color gray signifies blandness and boredom.  Sickness has the negative connotation of infection and unwanted symptoms.  He believes that people are “malfunctioning”, failing to reach his or her full potential to lead a meaningful life.   Similarly, the protagonist Oedipa is unhappy with the status of her marriage.  She is married to Mucho Maas, but recalls her relationship with Pierce Inverarity fondly: the chase of accepting the relationship (analogous to Rapunzel) and romantic escapades in Mazatlan and Mexican beach towns.  Oedipa engages in sexual relations with the other executor of Pierce’s will, Metzger, even though she is married.  “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..” (10-11) Oedipa’s reflections on a prior relationship, in addition to seeking new relations while married, exemplify her lack of satisfaction in her current relationship with Mucho.   She readily returns to bed will Metzger, without expressing any sense of remorse or guilt.  “After awhile she said, ‘I will.’ And she did.”  (30). Therefore, while Mucho is disillusioned by his job placement and role in the work force, Oedipa is disillusioned by her reality of being married to a man she does not seem to love.