Communication And Identity- An Interpretation Of The Crying Of Lot 49 From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Thomas Pynchon is an important American writer of the twentieth century. The Crying of Lot 49 is his second novel, which is also one of the masterpieces of American postmodernism. Taking place between the political oppression of the 1950 s and the cultural radicalism of the late 1960 s in the United States, the novel tells a story of the heroine, Oedipa, clearing her former boyfriend’s heritage and seeking for the truth of the Tristero. Though the novel is short, its detailed plot and open ending are a challenge to the reader to explore the infinite space.Since the novel was released, it has been analyzed by many scholars from the perspective of archetype, postmodernism and deconstruction. Based on those researches, this thesis mainly focuses on the two major characters, Mucho and Oedipa, with the help of trauma theory. In the novel, American economics, politics and society have an important impact on the traditional cognition of the characters. The characters suffer from varying degrees of trauma by the affluence of some American citizens and poverty of the marginalized people, freedom of American democracy and captivity of traditional moral values. On the one hand, by describing the ways taken by the two characters when they face their traumas, the novel emphasizes the importance of communication and identity to the recovery of the wounds of trauma, expressing Pynchon’s concern over humans. On the other hand, through their traumatic experiences of the two characters, the novel exposes the unequal living conditions under the surface of democracy and freedom of America, showing Pynchon’s reflections on American culture.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the author’s life and the text under discussion. The second chapter is on the current researches of Chinese and foreign scholars. The third chapter reviews the trauma theory from both clinical and literary perspectives. The forth chapter is the main part of this thesis. By analyzing their traumatic causes of the two protagonists, their traumatic symptoms, their attitudes and categories toward their traumatic experiences, this thesis discusses the importance of communication and identity to the recovery from trauma. The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this thesis. Through the analysis of the text and the comparison of the two characters’ recovery, we can see that these victims need to face the trauma by taking positive attitude, getting rid of their conventional identities, rebuilding a new identity to achieve the goal of realizing communication, returning to the society, and keeping vitality, which reveals Pynchon’s profound reflections on human’s identity and American culture and history in the 1960 s.