Analogizing Jean Baudrillard’s America and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49*: Entropy Imagery of the Puzzled

Abdullah H. Kurraz
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Abdullah H. Kurraz: Al-Azhar University, Gaza, Palestine

International Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 2020, vol. 6, issue 6, 234-243

Abstract: In The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon presents a postmodern society of a huge replication of puzzling out of symbols and ciphers of entropy, which result in an immense number of interpretations and reflections. Therefore, the authentic interpretative communities of these allusions in Pynchon’s narrative are both overwhelmingly definite and entropic. The Cryings sole protagonist, Oedipa, is loaded by a chaotic information overflow that yields anarchy and uncertainty. She also cannot find convincing answers to the mysterious yet realistic questions, hence, she gets alienated in the hyperreal puzzling world of uncorrelated information. Oedipa becomes mentally disoriented and indifferent as a result of the dominant hyperreality in the postmodern world. To trace this novels confusing symbols and allusions, which trap Oedipa as the most significant hyperreal source of this paper argument. There is a significant thematointertextual analogy between Baudrillards America, with the notions of sign-based hyperreality and postmodernism and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, for the latter portrays a modern society full of codified signs and simulation. This study used qualitative research method to trace and explain the various analogies and commonalities between the two authors and their postmodernist texts.

Keywords: Postmodernism; Thomas Pynchon; The Crying of Lot 49; Jean Baudrillard; America; hyper-reality; paranoia; entropy; imagery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:apa:ijhass:2020:p:234-243

DOI: 10.20469/ijhss.6.20002-6

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