The fifth chapter of The Crying of
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
