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Delirium tremens is a dangerous, often fatal syndrome associated with alcohol withdrawal in severe alcoholics. Common symptoms include confusion, fever, paranoia, and hallucination. Oedipa notes that the sailor she meets in San Francisco appears to be suffering from delirium tremens (or “DT”), but she decides that this is just one among many perspectives on the universe.
Delirium Tremens Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Delirium Tremens or refer to Delirium Tremens. For each quote, you can also see the other terms 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
She remembered John Nefastis, talking about his Machine, and massive destructions of information. So when this mattress flared up around the sailor, in his Viking’s funeral: the stored, coded years of uselessness, early death, self-harrowing, the sure decay of hope, the set of all men who had slept on it, whatever their lives had been, would truly cease to be, forever, when the mattress burned. She stared at it in wonder. It was as if she had just discovered the irreversible process. It astonished her to think that so much could be lost, even the quantity of hallucination belonging just to the sailor that the world would bear no further trace of.
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Delirium Tremens Term Timeline in The Crying of Lot 49
The timeline below shows where the term Delirium Tremens appears in The Crying of Lot 49. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...on fire—and forever erasing all the memories it holds. She sees that the man has delirium tremens , which means he is hallucinating, but this is just another way of saying seeing...
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