Having been named executor of her late boyfriend＇s estate. Oedipa Maas. the protagonist, a housewife, started her journey and soon found herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meeting some extremely interesting ...Having been named executor of her late boyfriend＇s estate. Oedipa Maas. the protagonist, a housewife, started her journey and soon found herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meeting some extremely interesting and absurd characters, quite beyond her imagination and self-knowledge. These characters came from different walks of life and social classes, but all have some defects and deficiencies in one way or another, both physically or mentally. Meanwhile, they seemed to be busy involving themselves in some ridiculous and meaningless tasks or missions of work or life, lingering and struggling, with uncertainty and hopelessness for the future. In this way. Pynchon＇s The Crying of Lot 49 presents us a chaotic and meaningless postmodern society which gradually turns into decadence and entropy. These absurd and pathetic characters were exactly, without doubt, both products and victims of this materialized, alienated and depressing postmodern society. The fiction is humorous, obscure, and very complicated, involving politics, history., religion, science and art etc.. This paper is to analyse the absurdity of some main characters in this fiction.展开更多
文摘Having been named executor of her late boyfriend＇s estate. Oedipa Maas. the protagonist, a housewife, started her journey and soon found herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meeting some extremely interesting and absurd characters, quite beyond her imagination and self-knowledge. These characters came from different walks of life and social classes, but all have some defects and deficiencies in one way or another, both physically or mentally. Meanwhile, they seemed to be busy involving themselves in some ridiculous and meaningless tasks or missions of work or life, lingering and struggling, with uncertainty and hopelessness for the future. In this way. Pynchon＇s The Crying of Lot 49 presents us a chaotic and meaningless postmodern society which gradually turns into decadence and entropy. These absurd and pathetic characters were exactly, without doubt, both products and victims of this materialized, alienated and depressing postmodern society. The fiction is humorous, obscure, and very complicated, involving politics, history., religion, science and art etc.. This paper is to analyse the absurdity of some main characters in this fiction.
