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?