Order and Disorder in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49

Abstract

Thomas Pynchon in his novel The Crying of Lot 49has tactfully managed to reflect the features of postmodernism including parody and entropy. He has parodized the modernist a esthethic convention of order, sequence, continuity, structure etc. Besides this, he has presented the entropic nature of communication. Oedipa Maas seeks order context, structure, certainity, fixity and stable meaning but her hope of finding meaning goes on deferring and delaying. Though she keeps her attempt continue, she gets some hope of achievement but not satisfactorily. It becomes a mirage. Showing the activities done by Oedipa to find the meaning of the central word Tristero in the novel,hehas tried to mock the modern writers indirectly showing that there is no single meaning and ending point. The quest off inalpoint is the paranoic nature of modernist writers. The novel presents the postmodern features like multiplicity, disorder, meaning lessnessabsurdity etc parodizing to the order seekers. Oedipa Maas in course of executing the will entangles with the unique word Tristero.The more she dives into the depth, the more she becomes puzzled and hung between the two poles. The varied interpretation of the word by the different interpreters makes the communication chaotic and cannot transform the real meaning. This way, the novel bears the features like the parody,entropy etc.