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James Clerk Maxwell
Arrabal is a Mexican anarchist who founded an activist organization called, ironically enough, the CIA. Oedipa Maas and Pierce Inverarity first met Arrabal in Mexico several years before the events of the novel. He has since gone into exile in the United States, and Oedipa runs into him (or dreams about him) when she visits his restaurant in San Francisco. In a symbolically significant passage, Arrabal comments that Pierce was the perfect embodiment of his mortal enemy—a wealthy, soulless businessman—and compares this to the definition of a miracle: “another world's intrusion into this one.” The name “Jesús” obviously recalls Christ, and “Arrabal” means a marginal, poor suburb outside of a city. Thus, Arrabal’s name suggests that salvation (or a miracle) comes from people who live at the margins of mainstream society.
Jesús Arrabal Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Jesús Arrabal or refer to Jesús Arrabal . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
“You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm. Like the church we hate, anarchists also believe in another world. Where revolutions break out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul’s talent for consensus allows the masses to work together without effort, automatic as the body itself. And yet, señá, if any of it should ever really happen that perfectly, I would also have to cry miracle. An anarchist miracle. Like your friend. He is too exactly and without flaw the thing we fight. In Mexico the privilegiado is always, to a finite percentage, redeemed —one of the people. Unmiraculous. But your friend, unless he’s joking, is as terrifying to me as a Virgin appearing to an Indian.”
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Jesús Arrabal Character Timeline in The Crying of Lot 49
The timeline below shows where the character Jesús Arrabal appears in The Crying of Lot 49. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
Next, Oedipa meets an old acquaintance, the Mexican activist Jesús Arrabal , who used to run an anarchist group conveniently called the CIA but is now...
(full context)
