Before the telephone was invented, people wrote letters to each other to stay in touch. Soldiers wrote letters to their wives and families expressing their love, and even today, people write letters to communicate better. Writing is a way of expressing yourself, a way of thinking about what you feel and communicating it to other people. In The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon has his characters write letters in order to understand each other better and also to communicate to the reader what is happening in the novel. Indirectly, Pynchon also satirizes the importance of letters and written communication because, in the novel, the letters confuse the plot instead of clarifying it. At the beginning of the novel, Oedipa receives a seemingly clear letter, but it is the beginning of a mystery that complicates the story and complicates Oedipa's ability to think clearly. As he discovers more about the mystery of the Tristero, he stumbles upon the WASTE mail system. This system forces people to write letters even when they have nothing to say and makes a mockery of the United States Postal Service. Although this novel seems like an ordinary mystery, its underlying tones of satire, through malfunctioning communication, are prevalent in Oedipa and in the letters written between the characters and in the WASTE postal system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Oedipa Maas receives a letter stating that she is the legal executor of her ex-boyfriend's estate. It contains relevant information about what happened and what its tasks are. For the reader, this is a point of clarification. Although the letters seem concise and to the point, they are the beginning of a great conspiracy that Oedipa will eventually unravel. After receiving the letter, he begins to see strange images that don't seem to be related. It's about Rapunzel, magic and Pierce. It is difficult to understand why she has such mysterious imagery from a letter, but what seems like a clear letter to the reader, is confusing to Oedipa. She remembers Pierce in her mind and then goes off on a tangent, not acknowledging the fact that she's confused at all. Pynchon is satirizing communication through letters and making Oedipa react unconventionally because she would have all sorts of revelations. Hardly about Pierce Inverarity, or about herself; but what remained and which, in some way, before this, had remained distant? (page 10). It seems normal to think about the good times spent with Pierce, but he takes it a step further. What follows her memories are stories from her days with Pierce that turn into a revelation about herself. She deludes herself into believing that Pierce has had no effect on her, yet she thinks so much of him and doesn't even realize how much she thinks of him. She has problems communicating with herself because she is not true to herself and her feelings. As he imagines Rapunzel in the tower, he thinks that such a captive girl, having all the time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and its architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what holds her really where it is is the magic. , anonymous and malicious, who visited her from the outside and for no reason? (page 12). If she believes she is the captive maiden, then she feels that she is somehow trapped and cannot get out, not because of the physical environment, but because something beyond her control is trapping her there. The only thing she could get caught up in at this point is sorting out Pierce's affairs. For some reason she feels like she's forced to do it by magic. Of course, she can't understand why Pierce chose her as executor, which is why she thinks magic has visited herfor no reason. The reader also has difficulty communicating because Pynchon does not communicate his thoughts clearly. The story, at first glance, seems simple, but Oedipa's reaction to the letter complicates what the reader originally thought of the letter. In this way, Pynchon may be stating how difficult it is to communicate or that communicating effectively is impossible because we can never truly know what someone else thinks. It could satirize the way people communicate through literature and/or letters. Detective stories usually have the same ending where the detective solves the crime and clues are always given. With this mystery the clues are inconclusive and do not lead to the solution of the crime. Oedipa's understanding of every situation is just beyond her reach, just as Pynchon keeps the readers' understanding just out of reach. Every time we think we know what happened, the book takes a different direction. As the plot progresses and the mystery unfolds, Oedipa and the reader know less and less what is happening. When Oedipa goes to San Francisco to learn more about Tristero and WASTE, she meets John Nefastis to find out if he is sensitive, but they end up discussing entropy and communication. To be a sensitive person she must communicate with the Demon, so he tells her: Communication is the key. Does the Demon transmit his data to the sensitive and the sensitive must respond in kind? (p. 84). To the reader, the whole idea of ​​the machine and the theory of a sensitive seems a bit ridiculous, yet the novel suggests that it is a serious concept to consider. The idea that communication is the key is the key but not to entropy. This statement can be understood more broadly to mean that Pynchon emphasizes the importance of communication in every aspect of life. If communication is not handled properly, errors and communication problems occur, just like with the machine. If a person cannot communicate properly, the machine will not work. Oedipa isn't sure if Nefastis is serious or making fun of her. Oedipa is, once again, confused about what to believe because what is happening is not clear to her. She's dealing with the idea of ​​entropy, which is new to her, and talking to people she's never met, which would make her question what to believe because Nefastis has no credibility with her. Communication is something that requires hard work, but even with hard work it may not be achieved. It's very difficult to get your point across, especially with something like entropy. Oedipa tries to communicate with the Demon while Pynchon tries to communicate with us. Letters are the old way of communicating, yet it is the only way of communicating according to the novel. People can listen to phone conversations and even open U.S. mail, but they can communicate safely through WASTE Edipa hears a mother say to her son: You write with WASTE, remember, the government will open it if you use the other one? (page 100). Communication through this new system seems to be the only way forward. Pynchon emphasizes the importance of written communication and makes fun of everything else. Using WASTE instead of the US postal system is a satire of the way he believes the postal system is run and since writing is so important, we shouldn't leave the decision up to the government. When everything is almost understood, Oedipa begins to doubt herself. and his discoveries, as at the beginning of the book. The Tristero is still a mystery but Pynchon leads us to believe that everything will be resolved sooner or later. We believe, like Oedipa, that the clues all lead to the answer, but with further analysis of the clues they may point to nothing. He confuses us and says: He knew why Driblette added those.