[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Postmodernism and Language
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
It is Pynchon’s intention to assert that communication and convention are not social, as a result of individual interpretation. Pynchon conveys this theme by creating a world in which all signs seem to be familiar to the extent that the entire world is foreign. That is, the line between signification and value is so vague that one knows not what Pynchon intends and therefore cannot dissect the story.
This parallels Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of “Art as Technique” in that Pynchon juxtaposes the familiar and the unfamiliar in his novel. Language is the means through which the story is communicated, but defamiliarization is Pynchon’s technique. The way in which Pynchon manipulates language, specifically seen in the characters’ names and the illustration of cultural chaos, ultimately results in a form of art that deautomatizes linguistic habitualization.
The characters in The Crying of Lot 49 are in every sense familiar to the reader. They are people, living in the United States and dealing with their problems. To this extent, the reader can relate. However, Pynchon perverts this sense of familiarity by strategically naming the characters so as to perplex the reader.
The protagonist, Oedipa Maas, has a first name that reflects Sophocles’ trilogy. Oedipus the king, like Oedipa Maas, has to solve a riddle. Oedipa’s last name, Maas, could allude to mass, as in hoi polloi and implying Oedipa’s larger personage. Pierce Inverarity sounds a lot like peers in variety or piercing variety, perhaps implying his inconsistent or diverse natures. In addition, there are a number of characters whose names seem to imply so much or so little that the reader is led to believe these designation are nothing more than Pynchon’s own satire at work.
Through names such as these, with a multitude of possible meanings, Pynchon is combating “algebrization,” a process Shklovsky mentions in his article....................
