Projecting Different Worlds: The Crying of Lot 49, Chapter Four

This chapter, although short, concealed a lot of hidden meaning, confusing insights, and connections that tied almost every event in the novel together. “For one thing, she read over the will more closely. If it was really Pierce’s attempt to leave an organized something behind after his own annihilation, then it was part of her duty, wasn’t it, to bestow life on what had persisted… Under the symbol she’d copied off the latrine wall of The Scope into her memo book, she wrote Shall I project a world?” (p. 64). The phrase Oedipa copied into her notebook can have a wide variety of different meanings. “Shall I project a world” can be applied to the tangible world we inhabit, everybody’s world, or to her own, personal subjective world. When applied to the world humanity inhabits, the phrase may be interpreted to say that Oedipa, like most individuals, desires to leave a legacy or a mark of her existence. Oedipa wants to accomplish her current mission, unraveling the secret around the muted post-horn symbol, and therefore share a fragment of her life and accomplishments with the rest of the world. When applied to the world-within-a-world Oedipa may conceal within her mind, “Shall I project a world” may come to mean the desirability of this character to project, or reveal, her personal findings inside the universe of her mind. She is asking the question of whether or not she will someday be able to discover every meaning and truth about the symbol she found inscribed on the latrine wall. Oedipa believes it is her duty to bestow life upon the mystery that destiny has assigned her and give meaning to it inside her own, personal world. Will she be able to accomplish both missions?

Chapter four not only comprised a very implicit meaning of some details, but also tied together every small element presented to reader thus far. “Decorating each corner of the stamp Oedipa saw a horn with a single loop in it. Almost like the WASTE symbol. ‘A post horn,’ Cohen said; ‘The Thurn and Taxis symbol. It was in their code of arms.’ And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn, Oedipa remembered. Sure. ‘Then the watermark you found,’ she said, ‘is nearly the same thing, except for the extra little doojigger sort of coming out of the bell.’” (p. 77). The Thurn and Taxis symbol, as Cohen said, was muted, or silenced, probably in a conspiracy against this postal delivery agency. This means that every object with the muted post horn inscribed in it is in some way linked to the WASTE symbol in the bathroom nobody ever seems to want to talk about and to The Courier’s Tragedy and Tristero, from which Oedipa remembered the verse in italics. Everything has been interwoven into a type of mysterious conspiracy involving the WASTE acronym many people know but never really want to talk about. “She asked him then about the initials W.A.S.T.E., but it was somehow too late. She’d lost him. He said no, but so abruptly out of phase now with her own thoughts he could even have been lying.” (p.79). Pynchon uses this technique of avoiding one of the central questions of the novel in order to give a special importance to WASTE and everything it may conceal. But why is WASTE more important than the muted post horn or Tristero?

There was a very peculiar detail about Oedipa that really caught my attention throughout chapter four. Every time she visits a place or talks to somebody, the mystery about Tristero and the horn always comes up. For example, she discovered that there had been a T, standing for Tristero, on the night of the murder in 1853 in Fangoso Lagoons. “A cross? Or the initial T? The same stuttered by Niccolò in The Courier’s Tragedy. Oedipa pondered this.” (p. 71). Why did Oedipa infer that this incident was somehow related to a Jacobean play that was written in England? Aren’t there millions of names that begin with a T too? On her visit to Vesperhaven House, Oedipa found out that Mr. Thoth, a senior citizen, had a ring with the same muted post horn sign she had seen on the latrine door. What are the chances that one may encounter the same drawing in two very different places with dates a hundred years apart? Is all of this destiny, or is it mere coincidence? Was the order of the universe somehow manipulated to make Oedipa be at the right place at the right time, or was she simply lucky to find all these signs and make the correct connections between them?


Vocabulary:

Dross: something regarded as worthless.

Waive: refrain from insisting on or using.

Demur: raise doubts or objections or show reluctance.

Philately: the collection and study of postage stamps.