The Red Herring Effect?
Within the first chapter alone, you are introduced to an abundance of characters. They all kind come flying at you out of nowhere with almost no type of lead up. Majority of the characters also have weird names such Oedipa Maas, Mucho Maas, Dr. Hilarius, Roseman, and even Pierce Inverarity. You would think that there would be some type of significance to each name and perhaps they advanced the plot in some way, shape, or form, but could Pynchon simply just be throwing us all a red herring?
When is first saw the name Oedipa Maas, I immediately thought of Oedipus. I thought she could be seen as the female version of Oedipus. She would be another tragic hero. I originally interpret the last name: Maas as the Spanish word mas meaning more. So, I thought her name would be interpreted as More Oedipus as in Oedipus Part 2. After reaching this conclusion, I decided to do some research on the names in this book and found that Oedipus last name "Maas" could also be interpreted as "My ass", which would ultimately make her name ironic. So instead of her being a sort of detective like Oedipus and discovering her truth, Oedipa would ultimately draw zero conclusion and discover nothing.
When is first saw the name Oedipa Maas, I immediately thought of Oedipus. I thought she could be seen as the female version of Oedipus. She would be another tragic hero. I originally interpret the last name: Maas as the Spanish word mas meaning more. So, I thought her name would be interpreted as More Oedipus as in Oedipus Part 2. After reaching this conclusion, I decided to do some research on the names in this book and found that Oedipus last name "Maas" could also be interpreted as "My ass", which would ultimately make her name ironic. So instead of her being a sort of detective like Oedipus and discovering her truth, Oedipa would ultimately draw zero conclusion and discover nothing.
I definitely agree with you on that the names could be a red herring. However, I think we started seeing similarities between Oedipa Maas and Oedipus in the second chapter. At the motel, a series of strange things happen and every single event can be traced to Oedipa and everything makes sense in a twisted way. This is very similar to Oedipus, where every single event in the play ends up being centered around him and all of his actions lead him closer towards tragedy.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is an interesting interpretation of Oedipa's last name that I didn't even think of! However, I agree that upon hearing her first name I immediately thought of Oedipus Rex. However, before class on Thursday I was unsure how a soldier and a tragic hero related to this scatterbrained 'friendly' character. A second look at chapters one and two reveals that all of the action, even the small descriptions of the electricity relates to Oedipa much like all of the torments to Oedipus' kingdom relate to his past.
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