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