Crying of Lot 49 Ending
Roll credits! The title drop in the end was, at least to me, very cheesy and only served to exacerbate the confusion and abruptness readers (and we students given our blogposts) felt. While leaving with a unsatisfying conclusion and too many loose ends to count, this novel is indeed a true mystery story.
Looking from Doyle, to Poe, to Shakespeare, and the unknown author of Piers Plowman, I understand a mystery to have two indispensable, yet separate parts: the enigmatic puzzle or intellectual journey, and the detective himself/herself who leads the reader along with his/her thoughts about the resolution to the mystery. Given the loose ends and no clear resolution of Crying of Lot 49, I believe Pynchon purposefully made the mystery secondary to the character development; the main message readers are supposed to take away involved Oedipa and her struggle against this conspiracy instead of "solving" the conspiracy.
Since Oedipa does no actively deduce anything from the plethora of evidence, Pynchon ensures that the readers can identify strongly with her. We can vicariously feel her sense of hopelessness and confusion because, besides the sexual and racial tensions within the novels, she acts like an ordinary person. During Chapter 6, Oedipa appears to have slowly lost interest in this case and developed nervous disorders, such a splitting headaches and pains in her teeth, when the subject of the case is brought up. She is not able to keep up with the mystery, and the mystery takes a toll on her. She is left feeling alone and abandoned, thinking that "there was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead"(171). This attitude is consistent with the postmodern ideas of skepticism and fragmentation.
In that sense, Crying of Lot 49 is more similar to Pier's Plowman than it is to the "detective" stories we read earlier. But instead of culminating in an intellectual epiphany, Crying gives a postmodern view of society and the nature of individual progress.
Looking from Doyle, to Poe, to Shakespeare, and the unknown author of Piers Plowman, I understand a mystery to have two indispensable, yet separate parts: the enigmatic puzzle or intellectual journey, and the detective himself/herself who leads the reader along with his/her thoughts about the resolution to the mystery. Given the loose ends and no clear resolution of Crying of Lot 49, I believe Pynchon purposefully made the mystery secondary to the character development; the main message readers are supposed to take away involved Oedipa and her struggle against this conspiracy instead of "solving" the conspiracy.
Since Oedipa does no actively deduce anything from the plethora of evidence, Pynchon ensures that the readers can identify strongly with her. We can vicariously feel her sense of hopelessness and confusion because, besides the sexual and racial tensions within the novels, she acts like an ordinary person. During Chapter 6, Oedipa appears to have slowly lost interest in this case and developed nervous disorders, such a splitting headaches and pains in her teeth, when the subject of the case is brought up. She is not able to keep up with the mystery, and the mystery takes a toll on her. She is left feeling alone and abandoned, thinking that "there was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead"(171). This attitude is consistent with the postmodern ideas of skepticism and fragmentation.
In that sense, Crying of Lot 49 is more similar to Pier's Plowman than it is to the "detective" stories we read earlier. But instead of culminating in an intellectual epiphany, Crying gives a postmodern view of society and the nature of individual progress.
I completely agree with you about how this book is similar to Piers Plowman. At the end of both books, we do not get a big reveal, and the readers are left with a "what now?" type question. I also like how you talked about the postmodern elements in the book. It popped up over and over, and I did not know what to make of it. I think your explanation makes sense, and it helped be understand the book from a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that there are many similarities to Piers Plowman. Both challenge what we consider to be a mystery, in that they focus on larger, big-picture perspectives on society . This novel slowly begins to drift away from the mystery of Tristero and focus on the emptiness that Oedipa feels about the world. Piers takes a view of society itself for most of the world, but The Crying of Lot 49 navigates towards this later in the book.
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