The meaning behind the title of The Crying of Lot 49

I went back to the end of chapter 6 to analyze into further depth the ending of the Crying of Lot 49. I wanted to focus on how the title of the novel relates to the end of the story being narrated.

To start, I found the first word of the title in the following quote, “We’re in luck. Lorren Passerine, the finest auctioneer in the West, will be crying tonight.”(151) In this citation of the text, the person speaking is referring to crying as the word used to describe the action of calling out the auction sale. It is rather strange to think of this act as “crying,” but in a way, the auctioneer is actually using a lot of pressure on the public for them to raise their paddles and offer more money. This people are actually begging for more money to be offered, but they do it in a threatening tone which manipulates the audience. When we say, The Crying of Lot 49, we are relating it to this part of the book and we think mostly of the desperate need to sell a lot. In this case, it is Lot 49.

The next word we see is lot. Now this word appears several times in the novel. Most of the times it is related to Mucho Mass, Who worked in a sort of parking lot and that later on mentions a lot were his radio station was located. Pierce left a lot of lots behind and they were very important for Oedipa to discover all her findings on the great mystery. A lot can also have other meanings besides a place. A lot, is a great amount of something, it is a certain amount of objects, it is to draw something from somewhere to have a luck based victory, to receive an inheritance, to divide, distribute, etc. After seeing some of the many definitions of this word, I could analyze that maybe the title is not exactly referring to the use of an object that would be raised to decide who would keep the collection of stamps. The lot could also be the collection itself which was denominated as a lot and was given a specific number to be able to identify it.

Finally we find the number 49. This number is a number that you don’t interpret as a luck number (7) or as a misfortune number (13). 49 is very a very neutral number, but it is exactly before fifty. Fifty is considered as half. You always refer as something that is half as 50%. Being fifty years old, is also considered living up to the half of a life time. When you see 49, it is the point in which you are about to be in the center of life, but are not still there yet. It’s more or less like a limbo. For the novel to include 49 in its title, the number has to have some significance, buy up until now, it can be anything, from the paddle 49 that will buy the collection to the age that person has or just the number assigned to the stamp collection in the auction, the collection being a lot.

Oedipa ends the story by referring to the title in the following way, “The auctioneer cleared his throat. Oedipa settled back, to wait the crying of lot 49.”(152) This symbolizes the whole plot of the book in one sentence. Oedipa’s anxiety to find the answer to the mystery is reflected in the way she awaits this crying. Finally we as readers can conclude that all of the efforts made by this woman add up to this crucial moment that will define the last piece to the puzzle. When she hears the crying of lot 49, everything will be clear for her, and her journey will end, or at least it will be near to its end. The Crying of Lot 49 is not only the title of this book, but it is the element that puts all the pieces together and leaves the reader almost clueless and full of expectations towards the final answer that the mystery will reveal.

Corrections

1. Belivig

Believing

The word was not completed. Believing was what I meant to write.

2. This symbols appears many times throughout

symbol

The write use of the word has to be in singular form because I am referring to one particular symbol, and not to various. The word “This” indicates that it’s singular as well.

Fantastical material in The Crying of Lot 49

I decided to reread a part of chapter 5 of the book The Crying of Lot 49 which caught my attention due to the fact that it contained a lot of fantastic material. Throughout this segment of the chapter, the characters experiment various hallucinations, dreams and fantasies.

When I observed that fantasy was present in this chapter so many times, I concluded that it was probably a tool that the author used to make reference to the 60’s which was a time that promoted drugs. The hippie culture consumed drugs such as LSD which produced hallucinations and strong sensations. This drug is mentioned in various occasions in this chapter and in the throughout the novel.

The first example that I found related to the hallucinations mentioned in the book is the following , “decorating each alienation, each species of withdrawal, a cufflink, decal, aimless doodling, there was always the post horn She grew so to expect it that perhaps she did not see it quite as often as she later was to remember seeing it.” (100) Here, Oedipa begins to imagine that she has seen the horn symbol almost everywhere she goes and almost in every object she looks at. She is imagining this things and she doesn’t really know why. One possible theory is that she is actually using LSD. The other possibility is that she has begun to loose her mind due to the stress and confusion.

The next example appears some pages later when Oedipa goes to Dr. Hilarious office to see if he could help her to get her head straight. But what she encounters that day is Dr. Hilarious gone completely mad, fantasizing that he is being followed by Israelis searching for revenge because he used to be a Nazi. It is also inferred that because Hilarious is prescribing LSD to people, he becomes so paranoid after a time that he looses his mind. In the following quote, he comments on fantasy and of the importance it should be given after Oedipa asks him about it. “‘I came,’ she said ‘hoping you could talk me out of fantasy.’ – ‘Cherish it!’ cried Hilarious, fiercely. ‘What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. What ever it is, hold it dear, for when you loose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.” (113) In this fragment of the chapter the Dr. is really crazy, but he does say something that is very true. Without any fantasy and dreams, you are nothing. It’s like ceasing to exist because you are not using your brain to create. Hilarious may also be saying this to induce Oedipa into LSD so that his business will continue to prosper.

Finally I read the quotation below, which is said by Mucho Maas to Oedipa in their reencounter, “Let me tell you. The bad dream that I used to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that?...It was only that sign in the lot, that’s what scared me...We were members of the National Automobile Dealer’s Association. N.A.D.A. Just this creaking metal sign that said nada, nada against the blue sky. I used to wake up hollering.”(118) In this part of the text, Mucho shares a dream he has repeatedly and that used to torment him. Nada, meaning nothing in Spanish, may represent the emptiness and hollowness of his life with Oedipa as a couple. This dream could also have been caused by drugs, since we are informed that he became a junky because of the prescriptions of LSD given to him by Dr. Hilarious. This was the final example of the evidence of fantastic material in this novel.

The Infinite Cry: Chapter: The Crying of Lot 49

In chapter six of The Crying of Lot 49, the story is given an ending and Oedipa remains waiting for an answer to the mystery. This final segment of the novel conveys some specific topics which are mentioned in the last pages of the book.

The topic of paranoia reappears in this chapter and it is directly related this time to Trystero and the conflicts against his organization. The stress that all of this caused and still cause on people is evident in various ways, including the following, “And with the end of the Holy Roman Empire, the foundation of the Thurn and Taxis legitimacy is lost forever among other splendid delusions. Possibilities for paranoia become abundant.”(136) This mental sensation of desperation and uncertainty is very obvious throughout the book and it is related to the main conflict as we can see above.

Later on in that chapter, Oedipa encounters the possibility that all of the conspiracy she has been trying to solve may actually be a trick played by Pierce. She contemplates many options as well. She is so confused that she considers the possibility of being insane. Fallopian is the character that makes Oedipa reflect about this situation in the following manner, “Has it ever occurred to you, Oedipa, that somebody’s putting you on? That this is al a hoax, maybe something Inverarity set up before he died.”(138) If this is true, then it means that all this time she has been looking for something that doesn’t even exist. The final answer then probably does not matter, meaning that what was really important all this time was the journey that Oedipa took to discover herself. She ended completely alone without family or friends, but she found out who she was.

The use of drugs and all their culture continues appearing in this novel, reflecting the society of the 1960’s. Oedipa mentions LSD so much that there is a point at the end of the novel were she can be considered as an addict because of the things she hallucinates and comments about. “Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids onto a secret richness and concealed density of a dream;”(140) The world of drugs seems to take over her life as well as a sign of ultimate paranoia and desperation.

At the end of the novel, Oedipa never finds out why Trystero appeared in the play, its true meaning in the system, or the essence of the whole investigation. She goes into Lot 49 to find out who was the person that wanted to buy the stamp collection, but the book ends there. After analyzing it carefully I deduced that this novel has a communication issue that appears throughout the story. Oedipa lost her husband, psychiatrist, friends, lover, and even the people that were helping her due to miscommunication. At the end, the final answer is never told. This made me realize that what the author is trying to show us is that the final verdict is not essential to the story, but the path that Oedipa took is. Therefore, this novel is not about a conspiracy, but about Oedipa as a representation of society and how she changes and ends decaying at the end, loosing all hope.

This novel is infinite, in a way simply because as more clues are given, the more the mystery extends, and the less closely you get to the final answer. The book ends before given an important clue, which can be Pierce as the buyer of the stamps. This theme related as well to Slaughter House-Five, since this novel is infinite due to the continuation of its time sequence and the repetition of the plot various times without ever changing. What this shows me as a reader is that authors of that period of time seemed to change the way a book was written and decided to create a movement were time or events were not as important as the development of the character internally and how they interacted within their society.

Vocabulary:

annihilation: total destruction

incommensurate: not commensurate; disproportionate; inadequate

hoax: something intended to deceive or defraud

The balance between nature and vice: Chapter 5: The Crying of Lot 49

The fifth chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 is the most extent chapter until this point in the novel. This part of the story gives out a lot of details that are very useful for Oedipa in her search of the conspiracy.

In the first segment of Chapter 5, I found that the entropy of the book is more related to Oedipa’s personal life than to the W.A.S.T.E. mail system. She begins to experiment with Nefastis’ machine to see if she was sensitive, but as she spend more time doing this, she made the following inference, “ ‘but what’, she felt as some kind of heretic, ‘if the Demon exists only because the two equations look alike? Because of the metaphor.” (85) Here, Oedipa understands that the Maxwell’s demon theory is also a metaphor which relates to the world of thermodynamics to the one of information. It exists purely because of this relation and because the two equations are alike and not because it ay truly takes place as an individual force. This topic of individual force and incapability is also related to Oedipa’s life, especially to her journey towards the unraveling of the mystery that hunts her. Within all of this, she realizes that her Maxwell’s demon is actually Tristero as it holds everything together, and permits the different events to take place. She expresses this in the following quote, “Two kinds of entropy, thermodynamic and informational, happened, say by coincidence, to look a like, when you wrote them down as two equations. Yet he had made his mere coincidence respectable, with the help Maxwell’s demon. Now here was Oedipa, faced with a metaphor of God knew how many parts; more than two, anyway. With coincidences blossoming these days wherever she looked she had nothing but a sound, a word, Trystero, to hold them together.”(87) Further into the chapter, Oedipa mentions Pierce as another metaphor of Maxwell’s demon in the following way, “The dead man like Maxwell’s demon, was the linking feature in coincidence. Without him, neither she nor Jesús would be exactly here, exactly now.”(98) She thinks that without Pierce, they wouldn’t have met in the first place, and they wouldn’t know what they know. These two characters have a lot in common simply because Oedipa is trying to discover the truth about a conspiracy, probably elaborated by the government because of its doings, and Jesús is an anarchist. Her relationship with him can be very significant to the whole conspiracy. The connection between the entropy and Oedipa’s findings is closely related. I expect to see those two elements present when the mystery is solved.

As I read this chapter, I noticed that Pynchon uses love as an element that is chaotic and harmful to society. He creates the IA, an association that alludes to AA(Alcoholics Anonymous) using love as the addiction. “The pin I’m wearing means I’m a member of the IA. That’s Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is somebody in love. That’s the worst addiction of all.”(91) By saying this, the author is mocking that specific period of time (1960’s) when the hippies began to impose themselves as a powerful youth group that promoted love and sexual liberty. Love was everything to them and they expressed it openly and without censure. Because The Crying of Lot 49, is considered a satire of the society of those times, making fun of the hippies and their love ideology is an evident element used by Pynchon.

This connects directly to the sexual elements that the author also uses a lot in the novel, probably to reffer to the sexual liberation that took place during the 60’s. There have been two explicit segments in the book, were sexual intercourse takes place and is proposed casually. The first time is when Oedipa has her affair with Metzger, giving it no importance and not worrying about her marriage. The second time occurs in the Fifth chapter when Nefastis proposes it to Oedipa very casually, “Come on in on the couch. The news will be on any minute. We can do it there. ‘It?’ said Oedipa. ‘Do it? What?’-‘Have sexual intercourse,’ replied Nefastis.” (86) There are also other aspects that Pynchon criticizes by using satire in this novel. One of these is the use of dugs such as LSD. In chapter 5 we are told that Mucho Mass has become an addict and that Dr. Hilarious went insane after participating in a campaign that gave LSD to people in the suburbs. Both of this characters experiment various hallucinations and they are completely mind absent as well as having behavior disorders. Dr. Hilarious refers to LSD in the following quote, “Discussing my case with? Another. There is me, there are the others. You know, with LSD, we’re finding the distinction begins to vanish...But I never took the drug. I chose to remain in relative paranoia, where at least I know who I am and who the others are.” (111) In this example we can see how even though Dr. Hilarious didn’t consume, he went insane by just watching how the situation was with the rest of the people. He became paranoid, as probably many people were in that time, trying to avoid drugs and sex. The Paranoids, may also be related to the Dr. in this case because they represent the hippies and their hobbies, such as doing drugs. They wanted to go against the paranoia of people against the movement they were imposing.

To end this blog, I wanted to comment on a final topic that appeared various times in this chapter and that caught my interest. This refers to the “isolation” that Oedipa is having not only from her family and society, but from herself. At first she feels that she doesn’t really belong and that she is very different from people and their interests. She shows this with the tone she uses towards others and how she under looks most of them. One perfect example of Oedipa’s social isolation is this one, “Oedipa sat, as alone as she ever had, now the only women, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals. Story of my life, she thought, Mucho won’t talk to me, Hilarious won’t listen, Clerk Maxwell didn’t even look at me, and this group, God knows.”(94) She feels alone and misunderstood, and that is probably the reason why she engages herself to find the answer to the mystery. She desperately wants to receive attention from someone. She feels so isolated, that she doesn’t even recognize her own husband, “ ‘That’s what I am,’ said Mucho- She didn’t know him.”(117)

Vocabulary

eschatology: any system of doctrines concerning last, or final, matters, as death, the Judgment, the future state, etc.

sprawling: To sit or lie with the body and limbs spread out awkwardly.

corduroy: a cotton-filling pile fabric with lengthwise cords or ridges

A WASTE of symbols? Chapter 4 of the Crying of Lot 49

In the fourth chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa begins to tie the loose ends of Inverarity’s clues and she finds out on her own about various scandals while no one really suspects that all of that is going on. The author doesn’t give the reader the chance to make that much connections and interpretations because the main character begins to discover everything and she states it directly without hiding information.

The first big clue is the symbol that Oedipa finds in the bathroom door. This symbols appears many times throughout the chapter and there is an specific moment were it is given a lot of importance, “‘The watermark’ Oedipa peered. There it was again, her WASTE symbol showing up black...”(77) I this part of the novel, Oedipa unites the WASTE inscription that she had found before with the symbol. The use of clues hieroglyphics and secret codes, are very innovative in literature. The author is establishing a genre that uses elements that make the novel interesting to read. The interpretation given by the characters to the symbols may not always be the correct one. The author may do this to trick the reader so that it is more challenging to find out what is really going on.

More of the words and terms from the play continue to reappear and they contribute to the development of the plot. One perfect example of this is the following quote, “From the same plastic folder he now tweezed what looked like an old German stamp, with the figures ¼ in the center, the word Freimarke at the top, and along the right –hand margin the legend Thurn and Taxis ... From about 1300, until Bismark bought them out in 1867, Mix Maas, they were the European Mail system.”(77) The Thurn and Taxis are mentioned her as well as in the play. Oedipa finds out they were the European mail system and so she begins to understand that Pierce knew something about all of this that nobody else did and that he put all of this clues in different places, such as the play, public places, etc so that Oedipa also knew the truth and would be able to revel it. The tone that is used by the characters, specially the new ones, seems to indicate that there is some kind of conspiracy going on, and that it has to do with a lot of people. I would say that this great mystery will have a world wide importance and that it’s probably because of that why Pierce left so many tracks to follow. Although the book tends to be mysterious, it is written in a way that it doesn’t allow it to be categorized as a mystery and suspense book. The elements that are used are unique and the connections are made by the characters, and not the readers, probably because of its complexity.

In this chapter I didn’t find any allusions or obvious connections to other pieces. The text has been sending many signals towards us, the readers to begin to analyze the plot and unravel the mystery that has been building up intrigue on us. The historical background has been a useful tool because it makes is sound more real and less fictitious. The novel has developed quickly and I’m sure that soon the truth will be unrevealed.

The apearence of entropy in the novel is the most absurd literary element that I had ever seen in a novel. Belivig that you can challenge certain forces and laws of nature makes no sense at all. The demon is probably a fake excuse to drag Oedipa into beliving, but at the end we can see that the intention is practically sexaul. Pychon uses the absurd to achieve a satirical tone to his text, so that the readers can think that it was a clever move from the author, and that it was actually very funny, although it wasn't as obvious.

Vocabulary:

protruded: to thrust forward; cause to project.

hatching: To devise or originate, especially in secret

languidly: lacking in vigor or vitality; slack or slow

The Trysteros Tragedy: Chapter 3of The Crying of Lot 49

The third chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, was divided into two main parts. The first one consisted of Oedipa and her discoveries of many secrets, especially about Pierce. The second part consisted mainly on a very literal description of a play that at the end relates deeply to Oedipa’s findings while executing the will.

As I began to read this chapter I encountered again with the use of rare names that the author of this novel has. A character named Mike Fallopian appears in the story, “introduced himself as Mike Fallopian, and began proselytizing for an organization known...”(34) This character makes part of an organization that seems to have very strong military roots and is very manly due to the fact that it was created to honor a war hero. By naming one of the members, Fallopian, there is great irony there because that word is very feminine simply because it is a female structure. It is probable that the author wants to allude to topics that have brought conflict in society such as homosexuals in the army or the participation of women in wars, just to mention some.

Later on, the “paranoid” topic reappears, this time coming from Fallopian himself, “They accuse us of being paranoids.”- “‘They?’ inquired Metzger, twinkling also.

‘Us?’ asked Oedipa? (35) This segment of the text can be interpreted in many ways, but the most logical one is that the society that is being described in the novel is full of groups of people that act strangely or differently to what society has established, and therefore they are considered “paranoid.” It seems that the excuse used by society to discriminate a certain group consists on focusing on how different they are. In my personal opinion, this is terrible because everyone has the right to express their thoughts and be different, for difference is what makes us human beings equal.

In the play that is described in this chapter, there is an allusion that can be made, when referring to the following, “...Marrying of the only royal female available, his sister Francesca, to Pasquale the Faggian usurper. The only obstacle in the way of this union was is that Francesca is Pasquale’s mother.”(51) The allusion is with King Oedipus, the king that murders his father and marries his mother without knowing that they share his blood. As I could see throughout this chapter, the play is directly related to everything that is going in with Oedipa, and because of this it is important to focus on the significance that incest has in this novel. Also, I realized that Oedipa id the female version of Oedipus, which surely has some kind of meaning in the story.

As I was finished reading the description of the play, I saw that the relation between its content and characters was very similar to some of the affairs that Pierce had been involved in the past and some people he had met as well. The most important connection is that of the “Trysteros.” When I read the word I was very curios and so I decided to look up for its definition, but I could find it. Then almost at the end of the chapter this word reappears this time as the name of the murderer in the play. This word represents a lot more than it appears to mean and the symbolic significance that the author gives it is not to be ignored. The device used by the author of using words with various meanings and reputing them to emphasize on their importance is very new to me, but it is very clever and insightful.

After knowing that, my question is,

What does Trystero mean, and what is its importance?

Vocabulary:

scope: space for movement or activity; opportunity for operation

proselytizing: To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith

poignant: affecting or moving the emotions

coy: shy; modest.

tegument: A natural outer covering

larceny: the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another from his or her possession with intent to convert them to the taker's own use.

Corrections

1. to emphasize on specific regions in Europe like Germany and France besides from England.

-to emphasize specific....

There is no need to use an “on” in that segment. Omitting makes the sentence clear and less wordy.

2. mentions names of places in German

mentions names of places in Germany.

The “y” was accidentally omitted. I was referring to the country and not to the language.

3. These is one of those poems

This is one of those poems

Because I was talking about one singular poem and comparing it to the rest, the correct use of the word should have been “This”, which is singular. “These” would be used when mentioning a plural subject instead of a singular.

4. Many of the time, the author

Many of the times

“time” should have been plural because I was referring to how in various occasions something happens, not how in one time or occasion.

A Complex Serenade: Chapter 2 of The Crying of Lot 49

Chapter two of The Crying of Lot 49, gave me a more clear image of what is going on in the story. In the last chapter it was a little complicated to understand, but in this new chapter, everything makes more sense.

In chapter two, Oedipa begins to reveal her true personality. She acts very different from her behavior in the first section of the book, which shows the reader that this woman has a lot of secrets. An important part of these secrets, is her mysterious past and how it hunts her in the present as seen with the will left by Inverarity for her to execute. When the book makes reference to how the past will always affect your present and therefore will have an effect on your future, I related to Slaughterhouse- Five and the constant time traveling of Billy. Although Billy uniquely relives his memories without changing their course, every time he goes back, he is affected in some way, and you can see it in the change of tone that the author conveys. This same theme can also connect to the movie The Butterfly Effect. In this film, the main character goes back into his past and he changes something negative hoping to have a positive result, but when he returns to the present something else goes wrong as a consequence of the aspect that was changed in the past. Oedipa made a mistake in the past and now she is paying for it in some strange way, even though she tries to manipulate her reality.

Further on in the text, I found the following quote, “ ‘It’s a group I’m in,’ Miles explained, ‘the Paranoids. We’re new yet’...‘You hate me too.’ Eyes bright through his bangs. ‘You are a paranoid,’ Oedipa said. ” (17) This fragment made an impact on me when I read it, simply because it was a very idiotic comeback made by Oedipa towards Miles. When she refers to Miles being a paranoid, she tries to convey that he is truly a paranoid besides from making part of a band that has that same name. The fact that the author uses these devices in his novel probably means that he wants to make a statement. In this part of the novel that statement is not as clear but maybe further on it will reaper. The author could be trying to say that young people are very paranoid now days, due to the fact that society is full of danger and unreliable intentions.

Some pages after, I found a very interesting citation that consists of a small metaphor that related directly to an allegory found in Epictetus, “A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury becomes an actor, right?”(21) This is very similar to the 17^th segment of The Handbook which comments on the following, “Remember that you are an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be...If he wants to play a beggar...a cripple, or a public official or a private citizen. What is yours is to play the assigned part well. But to chose it belongs to someone else.”(Epictetus 17) As I read both of these fragments I realized that the second one is an extension of the first, and it is precisely because of that why the one mentioned last is an allegory. A lawyer has to become an actor so that the jury believes him and votes on his side. If he fails to play his role correctly, then he will loose the trial. This happens as well in life. If you as an actor don’t follow the playwright as it is written, then his job is not accomplished. We are all actors because we have to act in a certain way to be able to fulfill what destiny has in store for us.

Finally I found an allusion between the serenade in this chapter and the poem, “The World is too much with us; Late and soon.” As I read the Serenade I found that there were similar elements in both poems.

“As I lie and watch the moon

On the lonely sea,

Watch it tug the lonely tide

Like a comforter over me,

The still and faceless moon

Fills the beach tonight

With only a ghost of day,

All shadow gray, and moonbeam white.

And you lie alone tonight,

As alone as I;

...

The night has gone so gray, I’d lose the way, and it’s dark inside.

No, I must lie alone,

Till it comes for me;

Till it takes the sky, the sand, the moon, and the lonely sea.” (27)

Elements such as the moon, sea, wind, etc are also found in the poem The World is Too Much With Us Late and Soon. Things such as the tide are mentioned in both. In the first one it is stated, and in the second one it is inferred, “The sea that bares her bosom to the moon” (5) as the sea is facing upwards towards the moon in the high tide. When in the Serenade it mentions how “Till it comes for me” it is very similar to the idea that is being stated in the other poem that seems to be related to natural disasters and the end of the world. Both of these poems have similar voices and apparently they have a analogous topic.

Vocabulary

Frug: a dance that derives from the twist

Hierophany: Manifestation of the sacred

Sax: A method of reading data files in computing

Manipulative words: The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 is not very easy to understand since the author uses a lot of techniques that imply avoiding the use of commas, mixing up the order of words, omitting connecters between ideas, etc. When I was done reading the first chapter I realized that I had read some pages more than once so I could be able to grasp the main events that were talking place.

The first element that I noticed that was used by the author was the use of names that had words with different meanings within their own structure. For example, “Mucho Mass,” Oedipa’s husband, in Spanish means much more. This may imply that the character has a much more important role in the novel or that his personality symbolizes something important. Another example is Dr. Hilarious who has a very ironic name simply because in the story he is evil-minded as he stocks Oedipa and wants to make her part of an experiment by drugging her. There is nothing hilarious about it, but it does go with the character because he has a very sarcastic tone. The other name that I would like to mention is Roseman, Oedipa’s layer. The name he is given in the novel goes a lot with the intentions of the character, since he seems to have a big crush on Oedipa, and is also trying to flirt with her. The fact that “Rose” is inside his name shows the reader his romanticism and part of his intensions.

Death is mentioned in the first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 in the following manner, “the violence that had caused each wreck being infrequent enough, far enough away from him, to be miraculous, as each death, up till the moment of our own, is miraculous.”(4) When reading this segment I thought that it was related to the theme in SlaughterHouse-Five as simply because it stated that death was a miracle. In Vonnegut’s novel, death for Billy Pilgrim was also a miracle as it was something that he had to experience frequently, but that he always reversed when traveling through time. For Billy it was also a miracle because he would never remain in that state for eternity because of his special ability.

The Crying of Lot 49, is also directly related to Brave New World as there are certain elements that both of these stories share. We can see one of those in the citation below, “‘I didn’t’ wake you up, did I?’ He began dry. ‘You sound so frightened. How are the pills, not working?’

‘I’m not taking them,’ she said.

‘You feel threatened by them?’

‘You don’t believe that they are only tranquilizers?

‘Do I trust you? ’She didn’t, and what he said next explained why not.

‘We still need a hundred fourth for the bridge.’ Chuckled aridly. The bridge.. being his pet name for the experiment he was helping the community hospital run on effects of LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin and related drugs on a large sample of suburban housewife’s.”(7-8)

This has such a strong connection with Brave New World because both books are using drugs to control people and therefore be able to manipulate them as society wants. In Brave New World, everybody consumes soma, to maintain a stable life with happiness and avoiding any frustration or doubt. The main character of this novel, as well as Oedipa, tries to rebel against this, as he realized that it is used against his will and that it’s purposes are not for the wellbeing of the citizens, but of the government.

Finally I wanted to address the following questions:

1. Why did Pierce make Oedipa his will executor?
2. What are the intentions of the experiment being done to Oedipa through those drugs?
3. What kind of lot is it where Mucho works and what is its relation to the plot of the novel?

Vocabulary

Litigation: a legal proceeding in a court; a law suit: a judicial contest to determine and enforce legal rights

Codicil: a supplement to a will, containing an addition, explanation, modification, etc., of something in the will.

Buffer: a person or thing that shields and protects against annoyance, harm, hostile forces, etc., or that lessens the impact of a shock or reversal.

any reserve moneys, negotiable securities, legal procedures, etc., that protect a person, organization, or country against financial ruin.

Rapport: Relationship, especially one of mutual trust or emotional affinity.

Ambivalence: coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.

Words Intended for Songs

Your Song
Elton John

It's a little bit funny this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide
I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live

If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song
It's for people like you that keep it turned on

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

When I read, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I saw that there were a lot of allusions that took place regarding other text that I had read before. I also noticed that this poem has a lot of similarities with Elton John’s song, Your Song, as well as it also has many differences.

As I read the poem, I went on the internet to look for the translation of the preamble that this poem has in Italian. When I found it I realized that it was actually part of Dante’s Inferno. This segment can be found in Canto XXVII lines 61-66,

"If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you.”

This relates to the poem because here the person who is in hell knows that nobody will ever return to the world after being in the inferno, and therefore he shall never speak up what he knows. The relationship between this and Elliot’s poem is that Alfred never tells the reader about his true feelings. This is very different from Elton John’s son because in this musical piece he does express his feelings to the person he has dedicated this song to.

“It's a little bit funny this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide...
How wonderful life is while you're in the world”(1..13)

In those parts of the song it is logical that the narrator is expressing his feelings completely. He is not hiding hi emotions and he isn’t keeping anything to himself as Alfred is doing in his song.

Alfred seems to be talking to another person may it be the reader or the woman to whom he is dedicating this song to. I would also interpret it as an inner conversation inside his brain, were he debates weather or not to declare his feelings. He wants to ask an important question. I personally would say that he wants to ask a woman’s hand in marriage because of the context.

“LET us go then, you and I,”(1)
“To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’”(10)

In the song, Your Song, the narrator is directing these lyrics to another person and he is definitely not afraid to speak his mind. This song is being dedicated to another person. This is not as secret, like it is to Alfred, and he wants everybody else to know.

“And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world”(9-13)

Here we can see that there is no fear whatsoever in the words because they are being exposed to everybody and it is obvious that they are meant to express love.

Although this two songs have a lot of differences, they also have some similarities like the use of a frustrated tone and the impotence of the individual to do some things on its own. There are certain barriers that keep the narrators from telling the reader what they want to say at times. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock is very reserved and he avoids expressing his feelings because of his frustration and fear. I would say that he is an old man due to the fact that he mentions so much that he is growing bold and thin, and that he has already lived everything.” I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”(120) He has very low self esteem and he knows he has too little to offer.

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe...
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”(83)

In Your Song, the narrator also shows that he has very few to offer and that he is also frustrated with his situation. But, differently from Alfred, he still has the courage to declare his love to that person and to offer them everything they posses, although it’s very little.

“I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live
If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you” (3-9)

Both of these songs have the same inconsistency in meter. They have different number of syllables in each line which vary within each stanza. This represents the inconsistency of the life of the narrators, and how they have so many problems. This shows that their life is completely unstable.

These songs also have a very big difference which consists of them not following similar rhyme schemes. Your Song, has a scheme that follows the pattern of ABAB, while other song has schemes such as AABCCDDEEFGG in one stanza, and then AABBCDCEFE on another, changing all the time. This also shows inconsistency in Alfred’s life as well as it emphasizes on certain ideas when the scheme is broken between stanzas. This gives more importance to the lines that don’t rhyme to the rest of the stanza.

“Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”(18)

Finally I can say that both of the poems have an accent that is consistent. This is iambic. When it accents every other syllable, the author is giving that text a voice and a rhythm that will keep the reader intrigued and interested in the lyrics. Writers seem to implement the use of iambic a lot in their texts, probably because of those reasons.

Corrections # 2

1. Billy, the character he has created has created

Omit the he which is incorrect because the subject has already been mentioned with its proper name.

2. servant is recalls fraise servant recalls a fraise

This part of the segment has wrong wording because it doesn’t make sense. When referring to the servant who recalls a fraise it is wrong to put “servant is” due to the fact that there can’t be two nouns next to each other. Is and recalls are both nouns.

3. hi own race his own race

In this part of the sentence I was referring to a subject, and therefore “his” was the correct word to use. Hi was an incomplete form of this word.

4. baring antiwar book boring antiwar book

I meant to say that I thought it was a boring book, not baring. This was probably changed by the computer

A Limbo of Hollows: The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men is a poem that talks about death and about its different stages. When I first read the poem it was a little confusing because I wasn’t very sure weather that it was talking about spirits or humans. As I read the text for a second time, I realized that the whole poem was actually an allusion to the stage that comes after death, such as a state of limbo. The descriptions that I saw in this poem were very similar to those in Dante’s Inferno as well.
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men” (1-2)

As I read these lines, there were certain things that popped into my head. The first connection that I was able to do, was the one were I observed that the “hollow men” could be actually spirits, because they are empty. This can be a representation of the human soul. It is physically empty, but spiritually stuffed, just as it describes above. The next line led me to think that my theory was even more appropriate.

“Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion” (11-12)

If something is shapeless, colorless, forceless, and motionless, then it has to be invisible, and therefore almost nonexistent, but at the same time it is mentioned there as something that is present in the setting of this poem, meaning that it does exist. The only thing that I could think of as a possibility for the characters of the text was spirits of people that had passed away. This had a very strong connection to the Inferno, because this place is full of dead people that are paying for their sins. They will do this eternally because they are not alive anymore, but their soul will always be.

The following quote was the one that convinced me that the narrators of this poem were souls of the limbo.

“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men”(12-16)

When they mention “those who have crossed to deaths other kingdom,” it means that they have seen have the rest of the souls have passed through the limbo and then have went to their designated circles in hell, went to the purgatory or were received in heaven. These are the kingdoms of death, described by Dante in The Divine Comedy. When they refer themselves not as violent souls, but as hollow men, it is precisely because they are neutrals, haven’t really sinned as much but they never did make part of the church, which made them non spiritual beings, therefore hollow inside.

Throughout the whole poem, the narrators describe a pair of eyes that are continuously watching over them.
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams...
The eyes are not here...”(II/IV)

These eyes can represent various things. One possibility is that they are the eyes of God, who is watching them from above constantly to see what they are doing and not doing. Another possibility is that these eyes belong to Beatrice, Dante’s true love, for whom this man travels throughout the three kingdoms of death, just to be with.

This poem, was pretty much in my point of view an allusion to Dante’s Inferno, specially the Canto were the Limbo is described as well as its members. There are other allusions that could be found, but this one was the most obvious one.

Returning to the textual memories: The Waste Land 4

When I read The Waste Land, chapters three and four for the second time, I realized that in my first reading I had ignored a lot of interesting details that this time let me to make allusions relating this poem to other texts and to some memories of my own.

The first allusion that I made was based on the following quote,

“The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends” (177)

This line reminded me of many things. The first one was the Bogotá Rover, which is one of the world’s most polluted rivers. This river is like the waste deposit for many people of the city. It has the weirdest objects inside, and it’s so toxic, that people have had to move away from it. For me this body of water has always been the perfect example of the filthiness and careless minds of the people in the world. The Earth is the Waste Land of humanity. We destroy it everyday more, until all its resources will be gone for ever.

As I continued reading, I found another segment of the poem which I thought alluded to Dante’s Inferno,

“White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year”(193)

In my point of view, this line alludes to the Inferno because they are describing bodies of people that are dead rotting in a sort of damp. In the novel by Dante, the sinners of the world also are put after death in slimy rivers of mud, fire and ice, suffering for eternity to pay for their sins. This image was very similar to the various described in the Inferno.

As I kept on reading I found the following,

“Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.” (244)

This reminded me of two texts. The first one was of Mid Summer Night’s Dream, were at the beginning of the story, the two lovers are separated by a wall and they communicated through a small opening. When I read this fragment I didn’t only related to the wall, but to Thebes, because I think that it was the same place were that story took place. The second relationship I found was that of the wall and how after passing through it, that narrator was walking amongst the dead. This was very similar as well to Dante’s Inferno when Dante and Virgil crossed the different walls and gates of hell and walked on top and beside all the dead sinners of the world.

Finally I found this quotation that got to my attention,

“A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool”(315)

I found that it alluded to Slaughter House- Five, because it mentioned that when a person was drowning to they saw their life flash before their eyes and they recall the moments of the past. I think that the same occurred to Billy every time he was in a scary situation or in a moment he just wanted to escape from. When this happened he time traveled to his past or to his future, in a way to ignore the current events of his life. Also, Billy began to travel in time during the war, and I think that all this things that he though he saw were hallucinations from a post-trauma of the battle field. Because he was near to death in so many occasions he jus t saw his past and imagined his future as a consolation.

Performing Poetry: The Waste Land audio analysis

After listening to an expert read TS Elliot’s poem, The Waste Land, I realized that my personal reading of the poem had a lot of faults. First, I missed a lot of the proper punctuation and the use of commas. The pauses made by the reader make a huge difference, not only in the understanding of the text, but in the fluency of the voice, and the essence of the tone that is trying to be transmitted. My reading of The Waste Land, also lacked a lot of emotion and mood, because I had read it for the first time and it didn’t even know what the poem was about, and even less, who was the narrator. Once I heard it, I could get a grasp of the real tone of the poem and I could understand the story that was being described. The other part of that personal reading that was very confusing was the usage of foreign languages. Elliot probably made use of this other languages to make the expressions more colloquial according to the people that were being described in the poem. He probably wanted to emphasize on specific regions in Europe like Germany and France besides from England.

“And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch…”(10-12)

The accents that the reader makes are very notorious when I listened to him read the poem. There is a certain pattern in which there are approximately three words that are strongly accented per line and they stand out a lot when the poem is read out loud. These words are mostly the first, middle and last word of the line. It seems to be that the poem follows an iambic meter because all of the words follow a stressed and unstressed pattern, although it is reversed.

“APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring…” (1-3)

The reader in the recording also makes it very obvious at times when there is an evident enjambment. This enjambment occurs most of the time at the end of each line. This happens because each line is divided into two parts. There is an introduction to a new idea at the end of the line, most of the time after a punctuation sign and then the beginning of the next line is like the continuation of the final segment of the line above.

“And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find,
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.” (52-55)

I also noticed that in some parts, there was an enjambment after two lines that rhymed. This was very strained, but at the same time it gave that new part a lot of force because it was introducing something different and innovative. The reader had to work with his tone to be able to maintain the rhythm he had been employing all along.

“And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.” (65-68)

Finally I also wanted to say that the reader of The Waste Land, had to use his own reading skills to be able to enjamb certain lines by speeding up the pace or using a different tone to be able to maintain the same rhythm. This happened when there is a line that is longer than the rest. The opposite will also occur with those lines that are too short and they need the reader to extend his voice by reading slower to maintain the tempo.

One for all and all for one?: The Waste Land part 2

I read The Waste Land parts one and two for the second time and I realized that there were some things I didn’t notice in my last entry. I have to say that I disagreed with some of the things that I wrote down in my first entry.

The first element that I had to disagree on was the location of the setting at first in the
poem. Marie is referring to her past in Germany not only because she mentions names of places in German but also because there is a part were there is a sentence written in this language,
“Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.”(8-12)

The usage of different languages such as English, German and French does imply something in the overall meaning of the story. The author is trying to trick us, but as I read carefully I noticed that Marie was probably from Germany but then she went to London. Using various languages is another literary device because it is a way of expressing something, without giving it away as easily. The languages represent as well the countries of England, France and Germany which have had several disputes over history in separate ocassions. For example, England was allied to the USA during WW2 against Nazi Germany. In Aug 31, 1939 civilian evacuations begin to take place in London because of german attacks. Then in Sept 3, 1939 -Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany. On the other hand, UK and France have had a lot of wars and conflicts including one of the Napoleonic wars, which was the war of England against France from 1803-1814.

The second part I didn’t comment on so much last time. This is a chess game that is being played probably by Marie (not sure), Lil (Albert’s wife), and by other women that are all friends with each other. They are talking about how Lil doesn’t want to have anymore kids, but the anti-conceptive pills are not making her feel well. Her husband is at war and he will soon come back and she doesn’t want to face him.
“When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.”(139-149)

It is very probable that all of the characters are completely different in this second part an that maybe they don’t connect to the characters mentioned before, as I thought. These is one of those poems that has really different stories and sequences, but that later turns out to be only piece in the end. I will have to wait and see when I re read it so I can understand more in depth.

A trashy place called home: The Waste Land entry 1

The first time I read The Waste Land, I can honestly say that I didn’t understand it very much as I thought I would. I could observe that the purpose of this poem was to narrate a story within a poetic structure. As I recall from last semester’s Spanish class, this is called an Epic Poem.

I can relate it to The Iliad, which is an epic poem that narrates some of the events before the Trojan War. The Waste Land wanted to communicate the events of the narrator, Marie, as she undergoes different circumstances in her life. The Waste Land doesn’t follow a rhyme scheme with a certain pattern, or at least you don’t notice it right away. Some segments tend to follow rhyme schemes such as ABABA, or AABB, etc. Depending on the voice of the part in the poem, the rhyme scheme varies. The meter is also very strange because it doesn’t follow a pattern as well. Each line has a different amount of syllables. This is very strange in poetry, because many of the time authors try to include these structures to revel an ideology or just the purpose of the text. As TS Elliot ignores these common trends, he makes a statement. In my personal opinion I would say that the author tries to convey these literary actions with the meaning of the poem as a whole. By just looking as the title I inferred that this poem was about how the world is a nasty place, a trashcan of humanity.

As I read The Waste Land, I could see that humanity is the main target of criticism. The negative aspects described in this text, leads the reader to despite at some point its own nature. In the following quote I found a very good example of this,
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! Hypocrite lecteur!mon -semblable, mon frère ! » (71-76)

In this segment of the text, I could see that Marie the narrator is asking someone about a corpse that they buried in their garden. This is showing a very common human behavior: murder. The natural reaction to committing this act is hiding the evidence to avoid a condemnation from society. The dog is also mentioned as the best friend of men and therefore the loyalty of this animal will try to find the dead body instead of hiding it like humans would. The capitalization of the word Dog indicates the superiority of the animal for its sincere qualities and acts of friendship. By capitalizing this word, the author is also inferring that the Dog is superior to humans as well as God is over the universe. This may be very ironic to many people because humans are supposed to be the masters of these animals, but if you analyze what the author is proposing it is very logical, because dogs are men’s best friend, while men is the enemy of men: We are our own enemy. The narrator also addresses us the readers to make us understand that when she talks about men she is also referring to us, that is why she uses “mon frère.” (my brother) .

As I continued with my reading I encountered many literary devices. One of them was the total capitalization of s group of words that I saw repeatedly through a part of the poem. “HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME,” was the sentence that I saw so many times and that mad me think that it definitely has something to do with the whole theme of the poem. For me, these words have a meaning that is related to life and its length. There is a person that is hurrying another person up so they can have something done within a time limit. Obviously this alludes to life. You want to live all you can while you are still in the world, and sometimes you have to hurry up to be able to accomplish your goals. The repetition of these words is also a literary device that the author uses to emphasize the importance of their meaning. He wants the reader to know that they have an important significance and that they will probably help with the overall understanding of the poem at the end.

Another literary device that I saw in this poem was onomatopoeia. The use of words that represent sounds are very common within the context of the story. I have read very few texts that include onomatopoeia in them as literary resource. Most of those who do, use it because of necessity as they describe scene that includes those sounds. In The Waste Land, there are various examples like the following,
“White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves.”(289-395)

As we can see, the author uses a lot of this literary devises to make the poem more realistic. When the poem makes reference to this sounds and noises, it makes the story even more similar to life itself. The purpose of this poem is to make allusions to life and humanity. When these elements are included, the reader gets more convinced of the allusion being true. These sounds may also be connected in some way with the tone and the voice of the story. This gives the poem character and it differentiates from other poems that want to make a similar approach.

Finally I wanted to comment on a quote that I thought was very interesting and that connected to many of my self-experiences,
“We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.”( )

When I read this fragment of the poem, it made me reflect about how we make up these things in our head all the time. These things are full of negativism and they only create worries and unnecessary suffering. When you think of yourself of a victim, then you will end up being a victim of yourself. The second connection that I made with this quote was related to my childhood. I lived in London for a couple of years and when I was traveling to France in the train that crosses the English channel, there was a boy that kept singing, “London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady…” This moment is pretty much the only one I remembered form my trip inside the train, and it just stuck to my memory for ever. I still remember the face of the boy who sang it, because impressively, he wasn’t English but he was Indian.

Ancient Greek... Philosphers or Judges of Human Kind?: The Handbook part 3

When I as finished reading the third part of the “Handbook,” I concluded that this text was specifically directed to men of the ancient Greece. And by referring to men I mean that it was like a guide for young men that wanted to be philosophers. The handbook contained comments that criticized the behavior of “non-philosophers,” which I personally thought was somewhat discriminative against people who don’t find philosophy interesting.

The first citation that came to my attention was the following, “For in this way you will never blame the gods or accuse them of neglecting you.”(31) When I read it I remembered all the different about all the people that I have met and that have blamed God for their problems, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions. When something really tragic occurs, people tend to blame anything or anyone else but themselves. Even when something that was out of their control occurs, humans don’t accepted but act like victims, without confronting their fears.

Just after I read the text that I commented on above, I found this quote, “Therefore, do not bring desire or aversion to the fortune teller and do not approach him trembling but instead realizing that everything that turns out is indifferent.”(32)This reminds me of Macbeth, the Shakespearian tragedy I read in 8th grade. Macbeth goes to the three witches and they tell him that he will become King. His ambition was such that he decided to take it into his own hands and he began to kill people and steak their power to be able to become king. He wasn’t indifferent to what the “fortune tellers” told him, and so he was King, but then had to pay for his crimes later on.

Finally I found a very sexist comment that was mentioned I this text and I wanted to comment on it, “Women are called ladies by men right after they are fourteen, and so when they see that they have nothing else except to go to bed with men, they begin to make themselves up and place all their hopes in that.”(40) What I could see from that was the evident degradation of women that has existed for so long in the world until a couple of decades ago, but that in a way is still present. In countries like Colombia, society is based on the family structure. Most Colombian families depend on the man of the house to survive, and it is probably because of this that men are seen as the powerful in most of the cases. I recall the role of women in the Bible, and it was also very poor. Women were seen as those who leaded men towards committing sins or the ones that committed most of them. Some examples are, Lot’s wife, Eve, Mary Magdalene, etc.

Overall, I have to say that I didn’t like this philosophical theories that were planted in this text that much. I thought that they were direct to a specific audience and was sort of naïve, although it tried to show exactly the opposite. It also had some very interesting points of view and I do respect everything that was proposed.