Just before the morning rush hour, she got off a jitney whose former driver ended in the red every day, downtown on Howard Street, and began walking toward the Embarcadero. She knew she looked horrible – the knuckles were black with eyeliner and mascara where she had rubbed, the mouth tasted like old alcohol and coffee. Through an open door, on the stairs that led into the disinfectant-smelling twilight of a rooming house, she saw an old man huddled, trembling with grief she could not hear. Both hands, white as smoke, covered his face. On the back of her left hand, she could make out the post horn, tattooed with old ink, which was beginning to fade and smear. Fascinated, she stepped into the shadows and climbed the creaking steps, hesitating on each one. When she was three steps from him, the hands moved away and her devastated face, and the terror of her glorified eyes in the burst veins, stopped her. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay “Can I help you?” » She was trembling, tired. “My wife is in Fresno,” he said. He wore an old double-breasted suit, a frayed gray shirt, a wide tie, no hat. "I left her. It was so long ago, I don't remember it. Now it's for her." He gave Oedipa a letter that seemed to have been with her for years. "Leave it in," and he held up the tattoo and looked into her eyes, "you know. I can't go out there. It's too far away now, I had a bad night." “I know,” she said. . "But I'm new in town. I don't know where it is." “Under the highway.” He motioned for her to continue in the direction she was going. "Always one. You'll see it." Eyes closed. Emerging each night from this safe furrow, the greater part of the awakening of this city at each sunrise returned virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he cultivated, what concentric planets had he discovered? What voices heard, flames of luminescent gods seen among the stained foliage of the wallpaper, candlesticks lit to spin in the air above him, foreshadowing the cigarette he or a friend must one day fall asleep smoking, to thus end up among the flaming and secret salts that all these years contained by the insatiable padding of a mattress that could keep the vestiges of every nightmare: sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, wet dream viciously consumed in tears, like the memory bank a lost computer? She was suddenly overcome by the need to touch him, as if she couldn't believe in him, or wouldn't remember him without it. Exhausted, barely knowing what she was doing, she took the last three steps and sat down, took the man in her arms, actually held him, looking with her stained eyes down the stairs into the morning. She felt wetness against his chest and saw that he was crying again. He was barely breathing but the tears flowed as if they were pumped. "I can't help," she whispered, rocking him, "I can't help." It was already too many miles to Fresno. “Is that him?” » asked a voice behind her, at the top of the stairs. “The sailor?” “He has a tattoo on his hand.” "You can bring him, okay? It's him." She turned and saw an even older man, shorter, wearing a large Hamburg hat and smiling at them. “I’d help you but I have a little arthritis.” “Should he go up?” she said. “Up there?” » "Where else, ma'am?" » She didn't know. She let go of him for a moment, reluctantly as if he were her own child, and he looked at her. “Come on,” she said. He held out his tattooed hand andshe took it, and that's how they walked the rest of the way to this floor, then the other two: hand in hand, very slowly for the man with arthritis. "He disappeared last night," he told her. "He said he was going looking for his old lady. It's something he does from time to time." They entered a maze of rooms and corridors, lit by 10-watt bulbs, separated by beaver panel partitions. The old man followed them stiffly. Finally, he said, “Here. » In the small room there was another costume, some religious treatises, a rug, a chair. An image of a saint changing water from a well into oil for Jerusalem's Easter lamps. Another bulb, dead. The bed. The mattress, waiting. She then went through a scene that she could act out. She could find the owner of this place, take him to court, buy the sailor a new Roos/Atkins suit, a shirt and shoes, and finally give him the bus ticket to Fresno. But with a sigh, he released his hand, even though she was so lost in her fantasy that she hadn't felt him leave, as if he had known the best moment to let go. “Just send the letter,” he said. , “the stamp is on it.” She looked and saw the familiar crimson 8? airmail, with a plane flying over the Capitol dome. But atop the dome stood a small figure dressed in deep black, arms outstretched. Oedipa didn't know exactly what was supposed to be on top of the Capitol, but knew it wasn't anything like that... [dialogue] "He's going to die," she said. “Who isn’t?” She remembers John Nefastis, talking about his Machine and the massive destruction of information. So when this mattress ignited around the sailor, during his Viking funeral: the years of stored, coded uselessness, the premature death, the self-tearing, the certain decadence of hope, the sum total of all the men who had slept on it, whatever their lives had been, would truly cease to be, forever, when the mattress burned. She looked at him in wonder. It was as if she had just discovered the irreversible process. It amazed him to think that so much could be lost, even the quantity of hallucinations belonging only to the sailor and of which the world would no longer bear any trace. She knew, because she had held him, that he had TD. Behind the initials hid a metaphor, a delirium tremens, a trembling surge of the mind's plowshare. The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose forgetfulness is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom everything is organized in joyful or threatening spheres around his central pulse, the dreamer whose play on words probes ancient pits and fetid tunnels. of truth, all act with the same particular relevance in relation to the word, or to what the word is there, buffering, to protect us. The metaphorical act then was a push of truth and a lie, depending on whether one was “inside, safe or outside, lost.” Oedipa did not know where she was. For the reader, decipher the difference between Oedipa's subconscious and the real voice. of the narrator in The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, can portend a difficult task. Often the prose surrounding Oedipus' dialogue and internal monologue seems to transcend a woman's simple understanding to a feeling of omnipotence - the narrator, through his extreme understanding. The detail of his refined depiction of existential situations, dreamlike behaviors, or otherworldly circumstances, demonstrates a particular understanding of the human experience that goes far beyond any singular Pynchon character. In this sceneparticular of old age and despair, the narrator, rather than providing a vision. a multitude of banal details to the character in question, creates his own conception of life and death under the guise of description. While tracing Oedipa's observations, the narrator takes his character beyond the sphere of simple, human interpretation toward heightened realization. of experience. Oedipa, by no means, is devoid of action when she approaches the elderly, drunken sailor. She feels emotionally mutilated and physically sick as she staggers down the street, searching for a clue to the underground postal system, and eventually comes across the man with the "posthorn, tattooed in old ink, who now begins to blur and spread.” The first paragraph of this scene seems to be full of physical details and descriptions. The reader does not glean much from either the narrator or the character of Oedipa, other than her obvious despair and exhaustion. Pynchon sets the scene for the reader by basing the description in the realm of mundane and sordid reality. As the scene progresses, the personality of the narrator emerges; However, at the moment of the encounter, the narrator clarifies the scenario by offering the reader brief information regarding smell, sensation, taste, color, and movement. The reader would immediately trust a narrator so steeped in detail; his observations seem sharp and incredibly poignant. For the reader, the description of "hands white with smoke", a mouth "tastes like old drink and coffee", the "smelling twilight of a rooming house" and "the terror of his glorified eyes in burst veins” rings with an inherent truth. With the gory and realistic details of life at its dirtiest and saddest, the reader can't help but trust the narrator. In this first paragraph, the scene maintains an incredible sense of truth and life – no reader can debate the realism of the details or the narrator's motivations in describing the vilest sights, tastes, and sounds. As the reader watches Oedipa climb the creaking stairs, slowly approaching the drunken old man, the narrator has already influenced the reader to a point of extreme confidence. The reader observes and understands the very emotions and visions that Oedipa experiences. The reader can see her knuckles as they are stained with makeup; who could dispute the legitimacy of a narrator who develops with such depth and precision the independent physical and emotional details of the character? Additionally, the narrator uses a hook element in the plot to draw the reader into Oedipus' observations at an even more extreme pace. As she sees the post horn on the man's hand "trembling with sorrow that she could not hear," the narrator's reliability becomes more acute due to her lucky observation of a clue. This paragraph does not attempt to deceive the reader with narrative style; rather, it attempts to draw the reader into a depth of reliable detail that will evolve into an intense, experienced point of narration as the scene moves to a more personal, philosophical level. At this stage the reader does not have the impression of a voluntary narrator; the written word simply seems to have an implicit honesty of detail that affects the reader in a positive sense to better understand the human interaction that ensues. The climactic image of the drunken man's hands suddenly parting in front of his face draws the reader into the narrator's acceleration of the plot. Yet Pynchon's existential narrative style has yet to rear its ugly head; the reader still gets the impression of a simplicity of theme surrounded by detailed style. RemindersConstants of the physical situation are textual markers allowing the reader to establish an intimacy with the narrator that arises from observational trust rather than philosophical agreement. However, after Pynchon draws the reader into the scene with the details of the environment, he begins to describe the drunken sailor himself, a man with "an old double-breasted suit, a frayed gray shirt, a wide tie, no of hat”. As the man begins his own dialogue, the reader suddenly perceives a hint of mystery: the character Oedipa approaches on the stairs has a history without explanation. His wife is in Fresno; he needs a letter sent by the only method Oedipa attempts to decipher - as he looks into her eyes, the man asks Oedipa to "drop it in" and shows him his tattoo with the symbol omnipresent horn. Through these simple interactions, lacking much detail aside from dialogue referencing a woman from the past with whom the reader has no prior experience, the narrator draws the reader beyond the details into a kind of mystery, a another clue in the foggy plot, about to be revealed. resolved both by Oedipa and by the readers themselves. Pynchon's talent for drawing the reader into the text through the reliable method of realistic description, appropriates a perfect opportunity for the narrator to address more complex themes arising from the singular interaction between Oedipa and the sailor. The narrator's tone shifts to a more experienced tone. after Oedipa tricks the sailor into telling him where the underground letter drop box is waiting for him. After the textual marker “eyes closed” appears, suddenly the narrator acquires a new feeling of omnipotence that was lacking at the beginning of the scene. The reader no longer dwells on the subtle details of a physical reality; with his eyes closed, Pynchon marks the transition to the dream state: the relationship between the narrator and the character becomes less important. Here, the narrator assumes the role of overseer - a force that Oedipus may or may not understand, as his character is almost subverted by this effusive narrator, saturated with concepts and ideas relating to life and desire. “Each night, outside this safe furrow, the greater part of the awakening of this city, at each sunrise, returned virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had it turned over, what concentric planets had it discovered?” , seems to be a sentence more full of meaning than Oedipa could understand. in an observation of a man. With his eyes closed, the narrator assumes responsibility for his own action: he has the power and ability to dissect the very soul of this man as he lies on the steps, his eyes closed in pain and sadness. A certain element of wonder and hope surrounds the narrator's statement; Although the sailor speaks of a sad state, the narrator asks larger questions about his value to the point that he retains the ability to discover concentric planets. Obviously, Oedipa could not speculate so thoroughly if she was simply observing the sailor in the wrong state of mind. The narrator therefore assumes a sort of power of tacit observation which he indirectly attributes to Oedipus, or which he maintains himself, like an unnamed force in the story. The dreamlike state of mind that Pynchon describes so gloriously in this paragraph does not necessarily imply Oedipa's own conception of the situation. As the narrator describes the strange transition from reality to surrealism, "wings of luminescent gods glimpsed among the stained foliage of the wallpaper, candlesticks lit to spin in the air above him", the reader understands that 'Oedipa cannot see the sailor's own dreams unless he is creating all the images of light from his.