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