Crying of Lot 49 ch 6

Like many of the other stories that we read this semester, Crying of Lot 49 seems to be a mystery story in that the meaning, purpose, and characters are all left unclear. Even though we finally figure out the meaning of the organization Trystero and the meaning of the muted horn as well as the story behind it, it’s still very confusing as to what this entire thing has to do with Pierce and the other characters. The idea that “this is all a hoax, maybe something Inverarity set up before he died” (138) is also brought up, but we never really truly find the answer to this in the story. Also, though the story touched upon Dr. Hilarius becoming crazy and Oedipa’s husband getting high on LSD, I don’t really see much how this fits into the story. She also keeps talking about how she wondered if “some version of herself hadn’t vanished with him” (133) and that “they are stripping away, one by one, my men” (126). I’m not really sure what Pynchon is trying to convey but he seems to be evoking a sense of mysteriousness and some sort of fear of like losing oneself or others around you. Also, I still don’t know why exactly Oedipa was so curious and interested in this whole conspiracy thing anyway that caused her to go through so much just to find out more about it. The ending of the whole story doesn’t really clarify why the book is called Crying of Lot 49 because I’m not really sure just what was the purpose of that final auction and why Pynchon didn’t reveal more about what exactly the point of everything in this book was. The multiple possible interpretations and the ambiguity and open-endedness of everything in this story really leaves a sense in which the readers don’t really know what’s going on at all and I feel like this is one of the main things about mystery stories that we see in all the books—the fact that we can question every single purpose and motive in the story. The book was overall very confusing and I still don’t think I have any idea what the purpose of anything in the story was.