The Daisy Buchanan within Oedipa Maas

I realize that we’ve already discussed “The Crying of Lot 49” in class, so I hope it’s not too late for me to be submitting this blog. I got into the habit of posting on Thursday nights and it didn’t even occur to me that I might need to get mine in sooner this week. So if this is too late, sorry!!

As I was reading “The Crying of Lot 49” I kept comparing Oedipa to Daisy Buchanan. I kept finding striking similarities between the two. For example, both have a child like quality. I felt like Oedipa wasn’t necessarily hallucinating the plot but rather she was creating a sort of childish fantasy that allowed her to escape from the boredom of the life of a suburban house wife. Daisy was also very child like. She too acts like a child to escape from the pain of her Tom’s, her husband’s, frequent infidelity. Both women are bored with their lives and desperately search for any source of excitement or entertainment. I believe this is why Oedipa is sucked into the mysterious plot behind the horn and why Daisy strings Gatsby along only to choose Tom in the end. Furthermore, both of these female characters lived in a time period that was saturated with partying and substance abuse. The 1920’s were a time of prosperity in America and Americans celebrated this prosperity with parties, alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity, much like the way Americans recuperated from WWII in the 1960’s. Both Daisy and Oedipa live superficial lives in which their relationships have very little meaning. Both women are unfaithful to their husbands and neither appears to feel any guilt regarding their infidelity. Also, both women live lives filled with paranoia. Oedipa is paranoid about this elaborate scheme that she has stumbled upon, constantly worrying herself with the meaning behind the horn symbol to the point that it drives her crazy. Daisy is overcome by her paranoia after she and Gatsby struck and killed Myrtle Wilson with Gatsby’s car, and she allows Gatsby to take the blame for Myrtle’s death even though she was driving the car (further proof that she didn’t take much stock in her relationships). Also, I noticed the connection between Oedipa and Pierce’s relationship and the relationship between Daisy and Jay Gatsby. Both men are past relationships that the women had before they were married. Both relationships bring back strong memories of passion and nostalgia for the women and neither Oedipa nor Daisy is completely over their respective man. Overall, I became more and more intrigued as I continued to find parallels between Oedipa Maas and Daisy Buchanan. It’s interesting how two works of literature can be linked despite the fact that they were written about 4 decades apart.

Significance to the Names of the Characters

After reading the first chapter of “The Crying of Lot 49” I was extremely confused. The stream of consciousness made the introduction to the plot of the novel seem almost like a puzzle with its pieces strewn about randomly left for you to collect and put together. However, after going back through the chapter I realized that the names of the characters served as a helpful tool to putting together the pieces of this “plot puzzle”.

During the first reading the names stood out to me as sort of odd selections such as “Mucho” and “Dr. Hilarius”, but once I went back through I realized that each names tells something about the character. Beginning with Oedipa Maas, I immediately made a connection to Oedipus and Frued’s Oedipal Complex. Although I did not see any references to the Oedipal Complex in the first chapter (not so say that there weren’t any), I think perhaps her name is a foreshadowing of something that has yet to be revealed about Oedipa, such as perhaps a strong dependency on her father or a yearning for someone to fulfill a father figure. I did see that Oedipa, much like Oedipus does seem to be rather paranoid and anxious. She is paranoid about the letter sent to her by a Los Angeles law firm informing her that she had been named executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity.

Just as his name indicates, Pierce’s spirit so to speak seems to pierce Oedipa. I got the sense that Pierce and Oedipa had a love affair in the past and now his spirit was reappearing in Oedpia’s life and causing a lot of trouble. She is struggling to figure out why she was appointed executor of the estate and it seems as though the reemergence of Pierce’s presence is causing problems between Oedipa and her husband, Mucho.

Mucho is the Spanish word for a lot, and mas is translated in Spanish to mean more, which corresponds with Mucho’s last name Maas. So literally translated into English his name means “a lot more”, which indicates to me that Mucho’s character is desperately searching for more, he isn’t satisfied with his life. He has the car lot and the radio show, but that’s not enough—he needs a lot more.

Funch, Mucho’s boss at the radio station, is not a very pleasant name and definitely not very flattering. Funch and Mucho often but heads at work because Funch feels that Mucho’s image is a bit too provocative. Mucho’s opinion of Funch correlates with Funch’s name. By that I mean, when you think of someone who is conservative with a by-the-books sort of mentality, referring to them as a “funch” seems like a good way to describe them.

Finally, Dr. Hilarius’ character name probably stood out the most. He is Oedipa’s psychotherapist or a “quack as they are sometimes referred to so it seems that Hilarius if a fitting name for a “quack” that is apparently not very trustworthy in his diagnoses and prescriptions for hallucinations.

As I started to study the text more and more I was fascinated by Pynchon’s selection of character names and they way the names revealed certain characteristics about each character. I’m curious to see if these initial speculations remain true throughout the novel.

The Queen

When I first read the title of the story, “There Was a Queen”, I expected the story to be about some sort of royalty or some how tied into the royal family. I was sort of surprised upon finishing the story that the family, the only three remaining Sartoris’ and their three servants, were about as far from royalty as you can get. I wondered how Faulkner derived this title and as I went through the story again I began to see the Queen imagery that surrounds Virginia Du Pre, the elderly, disabled aunt who spends her days in her wheelchair looking out her window.
Elnora is the character who holds “Miss Jenny”, as she calls her, to the status of a queen. The first inclination Faulkner gives to this is the capitalization of the word “Her” and “She” when ever Elnora is talking about Miss Jenny. Elnora is telling her children, Isom and Saddie, the story behind Miss Jenny and every time she refers to Miss Jenny the pronoun is capitalized. “With the Yankees done killed Her paw and Her husband and burned the Cal-lina house over Her and Her mammy’s head, and She come all the way to Missippi by Herself, to the only kin She had left.” These pronouns, which grammatically speaking should not be capitalized, are done so as a means of showing respect. Generally, when speaking of a queen and referring to her as “Her Majesty” the title is capitalized not only as a way to show respect but also as a way to acknowledge her authority. Elnora is doing precisely this. The words are capitalized to show Elnora’s respect for Miss Jenny as well as to acknowledge the authority and superiority Miss Jenny has over her.
Furthermore, Elnora always holds Miss Jenny to such a high caliber. She considers Miss Jenny to be superior to everyone else “because Miss Jenny quality…and that’s something you don’t know nothing about, because you born too late to see any of it except her”, as she explains to her son Isom. Elnora explains that Miss Jenny doesn’t complain about Narcissa because unlike the others, Miss Jenny has class and is above griping. The admiration Elnora has for Miss Jenny is much like that of which a subject would have for his or her queen.
Also, the way Miss Jenny sits at the window in her chair overlooking the yard seems as though she is keeping watch of her kingdom. She keeps a close eye on Narcissa and Bory as they walk out into the woods and then return soaking wet from sitting in the creek. She questions the servants about Narcissa’s reasoning behind her midday adventure with Bory much like a queen would keep check on her subjects. Miss Jenny is a lot like a queen type figure in that she is all-knowing so to speak. She knows exactly where everyone is in the house at all times, such as when she tracked Narcissa through the house after she returned from her afternoon dip in the creek, listening to her footsteps as she moved about the house.
There were several other instances in which I saw Miss Jenny depicted as a queen figure, these are just a few. I thought it was rather interesting that after going back through the story and searching for the meaning of the title it was so clear why the story was titled “There Was a Queen” and I was surprised I didn’t pick up on it the first time.

The Fallen Leaf

I think it’s interesting how the wife in “The Young Housewife” is portrayed as submissive in such a short poem. You immediately get the idea that she is submissive to her husband when the poet describes the house and “her husband’s house”. Even though she lives there and she calls it home just as her husband does, it is considered his house because he is the dominant figure. Since she is a housewife, as indicated by the title, she is not working and making money, therefore she isn’t paying the mortgage or the bills, so the house does not belong to her it belongs to her husband. The poet watches the housewife as she walks outside “to call the ice-man, the fish-man, and stands— shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her— to a fallen leaf.” She is described as being shy. I picture a shy housewife as someone who doesn’t stand up to her husband—she acts to please him. Also in that quote, I found it interesting that the poet compared her “to a fallen leaf.” To me, a fallen leaf seems lost. It is lifeless without its support system, the tree. To compare the woman to a fallen leaf is to call her lifeless. And someone who is her husband’s property so to speak and is submissive to him is lifeless because she doesn’t have a voice in the marriage or in the house.

I also found the last stanza to be very interesting. The poet is driving off and as he does “the noiseless wheels of my car— rush with a crackling sound over— dried leaves.” I interpreted this to further signify the male dominance over a female that has already been illustrated in the poem. The male in the car is driving over the dried leaves, which represent the young housewife (aka the fallen leaf). The crackling sound insinuates that his car is crushing the leaves as it rolls over them, which is representative of the fact that the husband is essentially crushing his young housewife into submission. It’s sort of like his dominating role is crushing her spirit because she can not be herself and speak up.

In Rachel Blau Duplessis' critcial essay of "The Young Housewife" she also notes the controlling nature of the men in the poem, most especially the poet. The poet holds control over the woman because "he has the power to resist, yet remark on, the sexual undertext when she, 'uncorseted' and 'in negligee,' 'comes to the curb / to call the ice-man, fish-man . . . .'". The poet also shows his control over the woman as he rolls over the leaves, which symbolize the woman, with his car. Also, Duplessis notes that the "reuful and dismissive" nod the poet gives the woman expimplifies his control over her.

Chesnutt: "The Wife of My Youth"

I am a hopeless romantic so I really enjoyed reading Chesnutt’s “The Wife of My Youth”. But besides the storyline, I found it interesting the way Chesnutt portrayed African Americans in this short stories versus the way they were portrayed in his other short stories that we have read. In the other three stories, African Americans were portrayed as uneducated members of the lowest class of society. Their dialect was that of the stereotypical illiterate slave and served to illustrate their inferiority to white people. However, in “The Wife of My Youth” the African American characters are members of a sophisticated society called the “Blue Vein Society”. The society as Chesnutt describes it, was “more white than black” meaning that its members, the “Blue Veins”, were educated and sophisticated members of society. Most of its members held upstanding jobs. “There were a number of school teachers, several young doctors, three or four lawyers, some professional singers, an editor, a lieutenant in the United States army” to name a few. In the other three short stories we read by Chesnutt the African American characters were all slaves. But, despite their literacy and sophistication and dignified occupations, the “Blue Veins” “would not have attracted even a casual glance because of any marked difference from white people.” I found this interesting because it seemed like Chesnutt was finally giving credit to African Americans and acknowledging that they were no different than white people, but with this statement and Eliza Jane’s character who speaks in the stereotypical slave dialect seen in his other short stories, Chesnutt seems to still insinuate that African Americans are not equal to white men. It seemed sort of like a two steps forward one step back situation. However, Chesnutt continues to build up the credit of the African Americans with the character of Eliza Jane. Eliza is an uneducated ex-slave. She is wearing gray, tattered clothes, clearly not in the same class as Mr. Ryder, but Eliza is portrayed as a better person than Mr. Ryder. She remained devoted to her husband for 25 years after they were separated by slavery, but Mr. Ryder, who ironically turns out to be Sam Taylor her long lost husband, had long forgotten about Eliza. In this sense, Eliza is superior to Mr. Ryder even though she is illiterate and unsophisticated because she remained loyal and kept her promise to her husband even though he quickly gave up on her and moved on to better his own life.

The Hypocrisy of Society

In reading Huckleberry Finn, I found it interesting how Mark Twain brought out the hypocrisy of society throughout the novel. Twain criticizes society for putting up a moral front but not supporting it with moral actions. In chapter 18 on page 171 Huck goes to church with the Grangerfords, and “the men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them hand against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination…” The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, the infamous feuding and violent archrivals, are going to church listening to a supposedly powerful sermon on brotherly love, not to mention that all the while they are sitting in the pews with rifles in their laps. The immense irony of this scene is meant to depict Twain’s opinion that society is hypocritical in their moral views. People claim to be religious, yet their actions don’t support their assertions. Furthermore, in chapter 23 Jim opens up to Huck, mourning over his children. He tells Huck the story of when he first realized that his daughter was deaf after suffering through a bout of scarlet fever, tears well up in his eyes as he tells the story. Jim asked his daughter Elizabeth to shut the door and when she didn’t respond he became angry and hit her on the side of the head in an attempt to discipline her. When a gust of wind then blew the door shut and the little girl made no response, Jim realized that his daughter was deaf and didn’t respond to him because she couldn’t hear him. The obvious heartache and remorse Jim experiences everything time he thinks of this shows what a kind, loving, and gracious father Jim is, in contrast to Pap, a drunk and abusive father. Twain’s contrast of the black father to the white father shows the hypocrisy of society in that white people believe themselves to be superior to black people, but don’t support their beliefs with superior actions. In this case, Jim is superior to Pap because he is a much better father than Pap. During this time, blacks were treated inhumanely, but ironically in Huckleberry Finn, Pap, the white father, is the inhumane character, and Jim is the humane one. I just found it interesting the way Twain expressed his opinions of society through the irony and hypocrisy of the novel.

Emily Dickinson: Advocate for Revolution

At first, I did not see the connection to the Civil War in “Revolution is the Pod”, but after several readings I began to get the idea that Emily Dickenson wasn’t necessarily describing battle scenes of the war or picking sides based on political issues, but rather she was supporting revolution. Therefore, she was ultimately taking the side of the South but because she believed in revolution, not because she believed in slavery.

In the poem Dickinson claims that “revolution is the pod” and “when the Winds of Will are stirred” or when the spirit of revolution is aroused “excellent is bloom”, meaning revolution is excellent. Dickinson in claiming that revolution is a good thing and should be allowed to bloom to its full excellence. She continues in the poem to say that a pod “left inactive on the stalk” or left “un-bloomed” will eventually die and is blown away by the wind. I equate this to the spirit of revolution. If it is not acted upon the spirit will die just as the inactive bloom dies.

I think that Dickinson is advocating revolution in general in this poem, meaning not only is she supporting the South’s revolution but she probably would have supported the American Revolution as well. She would have been a Patriot rallying behind the spirit of revolution. It seems as if in supporting revolution she is rooting for the underdog. She is rooting for the side that may not be the strongest militarily speaking, but they have the greater spirit. Thus, she’s not making a political statement in this poem by siding with South, I think she just enjoys seeing the little guy triumph and that is why she is siding with South and their revolution.