The Crying of Lot 49 Themes

Set in 1960s California, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 follows the unassuming housewife Oedipa Maas after she discovers that her ex-boyfriend, the wealthy real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity, has recently died under mysterious circumstances and named her as the executor (or “executrix”) of his last will and testament. As she sorts through the assets that Inverarity has left behind, Oedipa gradually uncovers clues that point her to a centuries-long, anti-government conspiracy of…

The Crying of Lot 49 is undoubtedly a novel of the 1960s: its protagonist, Oedipa Maas, is a conservative young housewife who feels stuck in suburban America and seeks an alternative to her boredom by adopting a wild conspiracy theory about an underground group of mail-carriers called Tristero. Oedipa shares the sense of profound alienation that many Americans felt in the 1960s, as their society became increasingly privatized, homogeneous, consumerist, and militaristic…

Throughout The Crying of Lot 49, protagonist Oedipa Maas searches for something to liberate her from her utterly boring life as a housewife. Indeed, this is why she gets fixated on the Tristero conspiracy, pursues an affair with a lawyer named Metzger, meets rogue scientists like John Nefastis, and obsesses over the will of her deceased ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, which she is supposed to execute. Although she never quite finds the…