How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Hanging in the air over her bed she now beheld the well-known portrait of Uncle that appears in front of all our post offices, his eyes gleaming unhealthily, his sunken yellow cheeks most violently rouged, his finger pointing between her eyes. I want you. She had never asked Dr. Hilarius why, being afraid of all he might answer. (1.30)
What do you make of the fact that Oedipa has hallucinations related to post offices before she even gets the first hint of the Tristero conspiracy?
Quote #2
He claimed to have once cured a case of hysterical blindness with his number 37, the "Fu-Manchu" (many of the faces having like German symphonies both a number and nickname), which involved slanting the eyes up with the index fingers, enlarging the nostrils with the middle fingers, pulling the mouth wide with the pinkies and protruding the tongue. On Hilarius it was truly alarming. (1.37)
Is Hilarius the craziest character in the book? How is Pynchon satirizing psychoanalysis here?
Quote #3
Oedipa nodded. She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were a bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't. (3.150)
Does Oedipa's fascination with Driblette's eyes seem natural, or does reality seem to be morphing under her gaze? Does this happen more and more as the book goes on?
Quote #4
Except right here, where Oedipa Maas, with a thousand other people to choose from, had had to walk uncoerced into the presence of madness. (4.20)
Is Koteks insane? How else can you explain his inability to distinguish science and mysticism? What would make a good engineer believe in Nefastis?
Quote #5
This night's profusion of post horns, this malignant, deliberate replication, was their way of beating up. They knew her pressure points, and the ganglia of her optimism, and one by one, pinch by precision pinch, they were immobilizing her. (5.101)
When does Oedipa start using the word "They"? How else can she describe her sense of the Tristero? Does her fascination that this entire conspiracy is being constructed for her smack of narcissism or truth?
Quote #6
She might well be in the cold and sweatless meathooks of a psychosis. (5.128)
How could Oedipa possibly tell the difference between a psychosis and her experience during her night in San Francisco? How can the reader tell the difference? Is it important that we are able to?
Quote #7
"I worked on experimentally-induced insanity. A catatonic Jew was as good as a dead one." (5.177)
What might Pynchon be saying about his view about the practice of psychiatry by revealing Hilarius as a Nazi? What character does drug use take on after this revelation?
Quote #8
Possibilities for paranoia become abundant. (6.88)
Is paranoia always unhealthy in Lot 49? Given Oedipa's situation, is it necessary?
Quote #9
She didn't like any of them, but hoped she was mentally ill; that that's all it was. (6.117)
Why do you think Oedipa hopes she is "mentally ill"? How would that be a relief given the other options?
Quote #10
The toothaches got worse, she dreamed of disembodied voices from whose malignance there was no appeal, the soft dusk of mirrors out of which something was about to walk, and empty rooms that waited for her. Your gynecologist has no test for what she was pregnant with. (6.127)
As in the beginning of the novel, we learn that Oedipa hallucinates. How does her unhealthy mental state make it difficult for the narrator to navigate the novel? Is there any way to tell what is real and what is not?