Candide: chapters 1-5 A perfect Philosophy

In the beginning of this book, Candide is introduced to us but most importantly, he’s love towards Lady Cunégonde. Candide is kicked out of his house because of his love toward this lady and here is where he’s journey begins. Candide is totally poor until he reaches a tavern in which a person sees him and because of his height gives him money an food. "We´ll pay your share, and what’s more we shall not allow a man like you to go short on money." (PG 23). This is totally absurd, how come people just give away their money to Candide just because of his height?

Voltaire Mocks a lot of different aspects of life and society in this book, he starts up mocking the incredible riches that nobles had a long time ago. He describes Lady Cunégondes castle as the best place in "Westphalia" because "it has a door and a number of windows". Riches back in that time were counted imprecise metals such as gold. Around chapter four, Candide finds his old teacher and the best philosopher in Westphalia called Pangloss in the floor totally ruined and in the verge of death. How come the wisest of all the people in Westphalia is in such a state?

Candide seems to find people who help him everywhere he goes, after the first encounter with the men in the tavern who paid for his meal and gave him money; he finds an Anabaptist that helped him and Pangloss. This Anabaptist sailed away with them in a voyage in which their ship was attacked and everybody survived except for the Anabaptist who drowned to death. What is Candide future, will he find a new life or will he fight for his love?

The Crying of Lot 49: Was there really a mistery?

This last chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 was the total opposite to what I expected. The whole mystery about the tristero and W.A.S.T.E was really no mystery and the whole idea of a conspiracy was not present at all. There are many angles by which you can approach this novel but the whole idea of the trystero is not what it’s all about.

In this last chapter Oedipa is able to find the meaning of trystero which is many things: from the underground mail service (Waste) to the symbol of the silenced horn. This whole mystery doesn´t help her at all in her job as executor and there was really no mystery to Pierces life. Other than this there are many other important events in this chapter that show the satirical content of the novel.

Pynchon makes fun of the church saying: "what’s in the Vatican?" Asked Oedipa "a pornographic couriers tragedy"(Pg 125). He links the church with sexual themes when the members of the church have sex prohibited. The fact that he talks about a tragedy that is being held in the most important religious site of the world is very satiric. The tragedy itself is very strange for there is a lot of sex in it that doesn’t match the real text of the play.

The Crying of Lot 49: The world goes mad

Chapter five of this book is the longest and most confusing chapter of all. The beginning of the chapter is very strange but near the middle it gets very interesting. This is where the story gets more complicated and very strange events start to happen.

In one of this very interescting sections Pynchon talks about love as a very damaging addiction:

"The pin Im wearing means I´m a member of the IA. That´s Inamoraty Anonymous. An Inamorato is somebody in love. Thats the worst addiction of all." (Page 91)

The fact that tere is an association such as the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) to prevent people from falling in love is very interesting because the fact that someone is in love is normally seen as soething good and poetic. Everyone has fallen in love some time and there are many different ways that people might react to the feeling, but to the point of makingit an addiction is a very extreme case.The fact that these group of people have an enterprise against falling in love is very strange. I had never thought about love in a way in which it would be harmfull and addicting.

The way that this group of people supossedly help people is also very interesting, there is a phone nnumber, to which they call in order to get asistance.

"Nobody Knows anybody else´s name;just the number in case it gets so bad you cant handle it alone. We´re Isolates, Arnold. Meetings would destroy the whole point of it." (Page 91)

The fact that a such impersonal way of helping each other is apllied regarding to such a supossedly delicate theme is very contradicting. The fact that you cant handle your love alone as itsays on the beggining of the quote is also important, because normally people would meditate on their love alone and think about what they should do by themselves. Most of th times beingin love isvery private and personal.

A second important part of this chapter is Oedipas meeting with doctor Hilarius, Oedipa has just spent a heavy night in San Francisco in which the symbol ifthe tryatero has appeared a number of times and she thinks shes starting to become obssesed and even crazy about it. When she gets to Hilarious office she realizes he has gone crazy.

"What´s happening?" Oedipa said. "He´s gone crazy. I tried to talk to the police,but he took a chair andsmashed the switch board with it." (Page 108)

Oedipas psichiatrist doctor Hilarious has gone crazy, this is ery ironic for he is supossed to helpthose that are becoming crazy or are crazy allready. also the fat that one of his assistants stayed becaue "He might need somebody" (page 108) is very ironic because he is the one that is supossed to be there when others need somebody. Thats exactly the reason why Oedipa whent to him that night, because she needed somebody to talk to and somebody who knew if she was becoming crazy.

Pynchon also talks about how people become crazy and start shooting at others, like the many examples of kids that have gone crazy and started shooting at schools or universities.

"Well hes shot at half a dozen people," replied nurse Blamm, leading Oedipa down a corridor to her office." (Page 108)

Doctor Hilarius thinks hes being followed, so he shoots at anyone he sees, he doesnt care if it is a patient or even the police. He is in a state of paranoia, where he thinks that everyone is against him. In this same scene Pynchon makes fun of the ridiculous amount of stupid questions that policemen do when invesstigatingor dealing with any sort of situation and how the media is always inside the most dangerous places.

"Who are you, lady". She told him. "how do you spell that first name?" He also took down her adress, age, phone number, next of kin, husands occupation, for the news media" (page 111)

Pynchon shows how the cops cooperate with the media in order to get as most information as possible to the people, when most of the times what we see is cops fighting of reporters that are triying to find out what happened. In this case its totally different: "Tv folks would like to get soe footage through the window. Could you keep him occupied?" (Page 112) The cops give media priority and instead of triying to get this crazy man to stop shooting, they whant to have some records and show the people through media what he is doing.

The Crying of Lot 49: "Waste" a series of coincidenses

This chapter is the shortest in the novel but not because of this is less important, it has a lot of important events and coincidences that I am sure will help Oedipa find out what this private mail is all about.

In this fourth chapter of The crying of Lot 49 Oedipa follows a lot of clues regarding "waste", the private mil that arrives at the Scoope. First she gets lost in an engineer’s office and finds a young man with some papers that have the symbol of "waste" in them. This young man tells her about a machine that is extremely interesting for it can only be used by those that are sensitive. As soon as Oedipa mentions "waste" the boy refuses to keep on talking.

She then sees a very old man lying in bed, he is 91 years old and talks to her about a story his grandfather talked about in which he takes out a ring that has the symbol of "waste" in it, again being a total coincidence. "My grandfather cut this from the finger of one of them he killed. Can you imagine a 91 year old so brutal?" Oedipa stared. The device on the ring was once again the WASTE symbol." (Page 74) Not only did she find the symbol again but realized that it came since long time ago when the Americans were still fighting the indians, this could give he a lead on where to look for the symbols significance. The first time Oedipa saw this symbol was in the female’s bathroom in the scoop. What is the authors point on showing such a mystery around this mail? Will this be the key for Oedipas findings?

This chapter cleared a lot of doubt I had on the novel mostly towards its main theme. I think Oedipa is not only looking for the meaning of the Tristeros, but she is looking for a very big conspiracy around the mail and the many other companies. What will Oedipa find?

The Crying Of Lot 49: First Clues

In chapter three of The Crying of Lot 49 Oedipa the main character stats finding answers or clues to the will of his former boyfriend. The chapter’s most important part describes a play that might be a representation of some acts that Pierce did while he was alive. The play is called the courier´s tragedy, and in this play a couple of people find some bones in the bottom f a lake. This same act had been done by Pierce who had found bones that where supposedly from Italians in the bottom of a lake. This maybe a clue for Oedipa or it might be a way for Pynchon to show the importance of this event in Pierces life.

This chapter is where she starts having revelations in relationship to her task as executor: "As if (as she´d guessed that first minute in San Narciso) there were revelation in progress all around her" (page 31) her trip to San Narciso was key to her research.

This chapter also mentions a possible meaning to the title for when she is looking at Pierce´s collection of stamps she thinks about them: "About to be broken into lots, on route to any number of new masters?" (Page 32) What could the meaning of the title be?? Is it related to the stamps or to the lots that "Mucho" Maas used to work in?

Not only in chapter three but throughout the novel I have seen that Mucho and Oedipa don´t have a good relationship which is confirmed in this chapter when Pynchon says: "Like all their inabilities to communicate, this too had a virtuos motive." (Page 33) Not only this but Oedipa betrayed Mucho with Metzelger, something I would never expect because of the very uncomfortable relationship they both had.

The music theme continues through this chapter too but it starts up in a very funny satiric way: The bartender said:

"Come on around Saturdays, starting midnight we have your Sinewave Session, that´s a live get-together, fellas come in just to jam from all over the state, San Jose, Santa Barbara, San Diego-" "Live?" Metzger said, "Electronic music, live?"
"They put it on the tape, here, live, fella." (Page 34)

This is a very funny satire for the modern music that is done in computers and in which there is no true art. There is no use of instruments or vocals which are the bases and the most important things of music. In the rest of the chapter we can see those songs that have been present in the whole novel that have a very shallow meaning or no meaning at all.

A new character shows up in this chapter called Mike fallopian, he talks about the most stupid and pointless organization I have ever read about, called the Peter Pinguid Society. This society talks about what they think was the first combat between Americans and Russians in a naval attack in which absolutely no body or even a ship was damaged and that nobody ever knew about. This could be a mock against all those organizations that have started developing around the most awkward and strange people. This reminded me of a documental I saw in the discovery channel about a group of people that live with rats and worship them. They have a temple and a religion based on rats.

Another strange character appears called Di Presso, he is running away from a man that seems very dangerous known as Tony Jaguar. After he runs away in a boat with Oedipa and Metzger they figure out that the person he is running from is actually his client and he is running from him because he wants to borrow some money. What is the point of this character? This same character, Manny di Presso is suing Inverarity because he didn’t pay some bones belonging to American soldiers of WWII and which bones were used to decorate scuba equipment. As Juan Mauricio said in is blog: Is this a Mock to the suing in the United States, where people sue each other or companies for the most absurd things?

The Crying of Lot 49: Trip to San Narciso

In this chapter Oedipa travels to San Narciso, a city close to L.A which obviously is San Francisco. She travels there in order to see some books and records that Pierce had left behind and to meet with Metzelger an interesting character that is the coexecutor.

In this Chapter Pynchon uses a lot of songs in his writing. This songs show the reader the way Pynchon sees that humans, more likely those who live in San Francisco see life in a very shallow way. The songs have some weird phrases and artists. One song is done by a group called the paranoids which sing a song of total loneliness. The songs are not the only thing that shows the use of music in this chapter, In page 30 Pynchon says:

"At the end his suffering eyes filled the screen, the sound of incoming water grew deafening, up swelled the strange 30´s movie music with the massive sax action, in faded the legend THE END."

He uses music to explain the suffering in this Hollywood movie. I definitely see the use of music as a characteristic of this chapter and maybe will continue through the book.

In this chapter we can also see how Oedipa dislikes Metzger even though she spends most of the chapter with him.

"She watched him fill her glass growing more anti-Metzger as the level rose." (Page 21)

She will have to spend a lot of time with him, because he is the lawyer that will help her with the will, will this hate reflects on some actions ahead or will it affect the will itself? The book is starting to create a lot of intrigue and feelings that could affect its outcome.

The Crying of Lot 49: Oedipa the executor

This first chapter of the book took me a lot of time to read, the writing is very hard to follow. Not only the sentences are organized in a strange way but there seems to be information shot at the reader about many topics in disorder. In the beginning of this first chapter Pynchon describes the main character, Oedipa Maas. She has been named to execute the will of her former boyfriend Pierce Inverarity.

This book is full of interesting topics, just looking at the characters names is very interesting. Oedipa resembles Oedipus, from Greek mythology. Oedipus was a boy who was abandoned by his family but faith said that he would kill his father, without knowing he was his father, and that he would marry his mother. After all this he would punish himself by taking out his eyes. How will Oedipa resemble this? will she have a similar destiny?

"Mucho" Maas is also a very interesting character; he is totally obsessed with used cars and works as a DJ. "Mucho" is Oedipas husband. I think this character will be very important in the chapters to come. "Mucho" is a kind of non-social character, he is not understood by others and seems to have a life with lack of friendship. “Mucho” Maas´s name means “Much More” in Spanish, This could mean that either this character is much more than it seems or that he has way too much things going on in his head. "Mucho" is a person that can be defeated easily.

"Mucho Maas, home, bounded through the screen door. "Today was another defeat," he began. (page 3)

Mucho just accepts the fact that he was defeated, and his says, today was just another defeat, which means he has had a number of defeats from day to day. Maybe these defeats happen in his different jobs or even with his relationship with Oedipa.

This first chapter has left me with a lot of doubts about this book and the chapters to come. What will happen to Oedipa and the other characters? This book is a satire that mocks modern world and human society, each page is full of meaning and because of this it´s very hard to follow.