Oedipa's Isolation

In the chapter 5, we really start seeing more and more of Oedipa’s descent into loneliness. The first instance of complete isolation that we see in this chapter is when Oedipa walks across the plaza at San Narciso College, where the students triggered Oedipa’s memories of her college time, when she was “a rare creature” (83) amongst her peers. At that moment, Oedipa feels segregated from the world of the people around her, a feeling she continues to experience when Nefastis’s explanation on entropy and communication doesn’t reach her and when she fails to connect with The Machine and comprehend its message. This feeling of total isolation carries on for Oedipa at the homosexual club, where she “sat, feeling as alone as she ever had, now the only woman, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals”(94) and reflects that she has lost her connection with her husband, Dr. Hilarious and her surroundings. She even dances with a group of deaf-mute delegates, who she has no way of communicating with or escaping. At this point in the chapter, it becomes clear that Oedipa’s investigation is leading her around in circles and that she is unable to connect and communicate effectively with any of her companions.

However, when Oedipa returns back home to Kinneret, she finds out that her shrink, Dr. Hilarious, has lost his mind and thinks that he is being persecuted. As a result, Dr. Hilarious is unable to listen to what Oedipa wants to tell him or tell her that she is simply hallucinating with her WASTE theories. Oedipa also discovers that her husband is on LSD, which makes him so withdrawn from normal human interaction that Oedipa feels like “so much of him already had dissipated” (118) and that she cannot even recognize him anymore. This discovery means that Oedipa has lost her closest confidents and has no way of going back to her old life before Pierce’s death anymore. At this point in the book, Oedipa has reached a state of total isolation and despair and has become completely lost in her hallucinations without a way of turning back.