"Crying of Lot 49" Chapter 4 -- Thomas Pynchon

The Crying of Lot 49 is a book like no other I have read before. It possesses a sense of humor that I have not often read in books, yet is still extremely confusing and difficult to follow. Oedipa Maas is a very strange character as well. In this chapter, Mrs. Maas goes to a stockholder meeting for the company Yoyodyne. During a tour in this meeting, she becomes a little lost and meets Stanley Koteks. Mr. Koteks is a very interesting character, and seems to me to be a little mentally unstable. He goes on this crazy talk about a perpetual motion machine; but what interests Oedipa is that he was drawing the same mysterious symbol that she found in the stall at the bar. She also finds the symbol on an old signet ring shown to her my an old man named Mr. Thoth, who also tells her about strange dreams he has about his grandfather, who fought against some mysterious "Indians." Oedipa then goes back to Mr. Fallopian in order to try and piece together the mystery of this symbol, and it is then that she realizes she may be uncovering a very old conspiracy. This novel has a lot of satire in it, as well as some odd humor. I look forward to discussing it in class tomorrow and diving deeper into the underlying themes and motifs that are present in this work.