PROJECTED REALITIES AND ONTOLOGICAL PARADOXES IN THOMAS PYNCHON'S NOVEL THE CRYING OF LOT 49

Abstract

Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 is a story about a search for answers about a possible conspiracy with a structure so complex that it proves impossible to tell between truth and illusion. Instead of resolution, discoveries bring new questions, whereas the path to the goal leads back to the beginning of the search. A vicious circle with no clear beginning or end creates an ontological paradox in which the protagonist named Oedipa Maas projects new realities, none of which may be singled out as objective. During the search for the truth about the Tristero conspiracy, in which reality, paranoia, hallucinations and madness intertwine, time and space, as constants in objective reality, lose their importance and the entire reality turns to be Oedipa’s mental projection. The reality perceived by Oedipa is a paradoxical ontological loop, analogous to the painting of Remedios Varo, and Oedipa cannot find her way out of it as she is a prisoner of her own illusion.