Oedipa's Quest and Two Americas

에디파의 탐구와 두 개의 미국

As Oedipa Mass, the heroine of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, is apparently associated with Oedipus, the hero in Sophocles' tragedy, this paper aims to show some of their similarities in quest theme and plot development as well as in the use of dramatic irony. Oedipus the King opens with a priest's pleas to relieve the Theban people from a plague and the king's promise to rid its cause by avenging the murder of the former king, as told by the oracle. Lot 49 begins as a Los Angeles law firm informs Oedipa that she is named as the executrix in her former lover Inverarity's will to sort out the mogul's estate. Ironically, however, Oedipus' investigation reveals himself to be the very cause of the national disaster, the murderer for whom he searched. Likewise, Oedipa starts her inquiry dedicating herself to make sense out of what Inverarity had left behind, only to find that the legacy was America. Sophocles and Pynchon both employ dramatic irony to provide a controlling principle for plot development in their works. In Oedipus the King, Sophocles creates mounting tension as well as distance between the reader's knowledge and the protagonist's ignorance, compressing the play's action into the moment that Oedipus discovers his real identity. For dramatic irony, however, Pynchon tends to work through authorial comments and utilize allegorical meanings of the characters' names, directing his novel at illuminating Oedipa's discovery of Inverarity's legacy as well as the meaning of Tristero, an underground postal service system. Unlike Oedipus the King that proceeds on a single line of action, Lot 49 develops in esoteric, multi-layered allusions and intricately-interrelated double strains involving Oedipa's roles as executrix and quester. At the end of Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus stabs his eyes and decides to live in exile, realizing that, blinded, he begot his children through his mother; Oedipa comes to a painful realization that she allowed her former lover to create death-orienting America without her diversity and moral system in old times. As Oedipa now discovers herself through her search for Tristero, her tragic spirit lies in her determination to confront her binary choices between two Americas: transcendence or entropy, the Tristero possibility or Inverarity's America. Ultimately, Oedipa tries to find who will be the bidder for the Tristero forged stamps designated as lot 49, awaiting the auctioneer's cry and the "crying" of a new-born America.