Ann Moore's Life

This narrative comes from a viewpoint that is not that of the main characters. It is a different sort of narrative and could maybe be classified under anti-narrative. The story has no real plot, it seems very real, like it could have actually happen. Not one event is made to stand out over any others but almost to lay out her whole life to see how all of her interactions have led her to the end. The story is intriguing because it keeps you involved although there is no real plot. This book would probably relate to many other peoples lives. The way she moves from partner, and city to city seems like something someone would tell in a true story. The writer of the story spreads the entire story out so it seems all the same there seems to be no climax to the story but rather the whole story is equally important in the message. I think the subtextual meaning comes thru-ought the whole story of how important a whole lifetime is worth and not just key parts of someone's life. It seems to explain how life can be a collection of events that shape someone. It is a gradual process, just like life is a gradual process.

Orbiting

These stories didnt seem to have as much subextual meaning to me as some other stories we read but some things intrigued me while reading. On page 58 of Orbiting the word fetus is used at the end of the page. This is just my personal opinion and I have no proof of this. But when that word is used it makes me believe that the person has a degraded value of human life. Fetus is a very informal term. Biologically life starts when the sperm fertilizes the egg and cell division starts. But this is purely my opinion and and not judmental of anyone who calls a baby in the womb a fetus.

The next was on page 62 through 63 when he talks about opposites. He says, "Yin and yang, hot and sour, green and yellow." Yin and yang are complementary opposites but hot and sour? The opposite of hot is cold and the opposite of sour is sweet and yellow and green are not opposite colors on the color wheel. So what intrigues me is why he made a contrast of opposites at first then said two things that weren't opposites. Could he possibly be implying that even though its technically not an opposite it still an opposite. What I mean is that an opposites don't necessarily have to be antonyms of each other but opposites can be anything that is different?

At the end of the story Renata is thinking of Ro, how she can make him into an American, dress him teach him the culture. This is not the first time a woman has been portrayed as wanting to change a man, help him because he is somewhat helpless. What is it with women's fascination of trying to help a man in that way. They want to take a man and almost nurture him back to health, not in the same context but the concept is the same. They want to shape him into a real man, is this some sort of motherly instinct to nurture. Do women feel a need to nurture and care for the ones they love almost in a motherly way?

White Noise Chapters 36-40

In these, the final chapters of the book. The scene becomes much more morbid, much more talk about death and much more metaphors and analytics on the talk of death. The first thing that stuck out to me was right in the beginning of the reading. page 260, Jack says, "How final is the Age of Darkness? Does it mean supreme destruction, a night that swallows existence so completely that I am cured of my own lonely dying?" This is an incredibly morbid and deep thing Jack is thinking about, he is so consumed with his death and the fear of it grips him so tightly that he is wondering if there is some sort of darkness that will just swallow all his fears and take him away. This was to me a foreshadowing later into the book that he was going to become so taken by his fear that he was going to do something very inhuman and unlike him.

Another foreshadowing was right on the next page where it says, " Was I immersing myself, little by little, in a secret life." He is becoming more and more involved in his fear looking for the Dylar, now he has the gun. He is just wondering to himself if he is somehow becoming different. He is acknowledging the fact that he he is changing.

Jack makes an ironic statement in my opininion on page 275, he says, "Do you think I'm somehow healthier because I don't know how to repress?" He is actually asking Murray if because his fear of death overwhelms him if somehow it actually makes him healthier. As we have all seen his paranoia cannot be good, how can he even claim to be healthier, unless he has a contorted view of what healthy is supposed to be. Later in that statement he goes on to say, "Is it possible that constant fear is the natural state of man and that by living close to my fear I am actually doing something heroic, Murray?" Now he is trying to justify his paranoia I think. He is tring to justify that him being so preoccupied with his health is somehow some huge statement to man that he is better because he can be real about his death and not live in ignorant bliss of it. Could this fear be affecting Jack's logic and decision making?

Another foreshadowing that hit me was on page 278 when Murray tells Jack in one simple sentenc, "Kill to live." He is referring to that people do it to relieve their fear of death. This to me was a big insight, why is Murray talking about so much killing and death to Jack? Why wouldn't Murray be trying to console Jack instead of filling his head with ideas knowing Jack is almost on his wit's end with himself.

The climax of the entire story comes on page 298, without even knowing it in the beginning I think we were all lead to this point. Especially after Babbette told him she had been sleeping with Gray. Jack at this point was not only obsessed with death but now also finding Gray. Skipping many details Jack finds Gray who he now knows as Mink. The most significant line in the entire book comes on page 298, right after Jack had shot mink, "Mink's pain was beautiful, intense. Dellilo hear describes the emotions of Jack very elegantly, but simple. The next paragraph starts, "I fired a second shot just to fire it, relive the experience,.." Jack is so consumed with this feeling he decides to relive it. This makes Jack's deep fear of death subside if only for a little bit. I think Jack gets almost a high from holding death and life in his hand, playing the role of God. It is a great power to hold in your hand and can hold serious ramifications if you do not handle it properly.

White Noise Chapters 29-36

These chapters seemed a bit slower to me and I didn't quite get as much literary meaning out of them as some other ones whatever the reason may be but I was able to find some that really peaked my interest.

ON page 217 Winnie says, "I don't know what your personal involvement is with this substance,"..."but I think it's a mistake to lose one's sense of death, even one's fear of death. Isn't death the boundary we need? YOu have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border limit."

This was a huge passage in the book I think. During the entire book the theme has been morbid and about death. Dellilo makes a big statement right here about death. As humans are we not bound by death? Ultimately whether we like it or not it affects our everyday decisions. Subconsciously though. Without a fear of dying we would have reckless abandon and then what. No one knows. Death has a certain way of keeping a person in line wether it be Death itself that does this or the fear of it, it keeps certain people in line. While others try to supersede death and cheat it it will eventually catch up to you. It is one of the processes of mother nature that cannot be toyed with.

One more thing on page 245 Murray discusses something about nostalgia, "I dont trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form of nastalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."

Could he really be saying that people become so nostalgic that they will resort to violence? It makes logical sense in a way. If a person becomes so hard pressed that they feel like they have nothing left to live for then they lose all sense of being and will do anything to feel they way they want to again. A man who has lost everything feels like he has nothing, that man will do anything to see revenge for the things in which he grieves over. It's a classic case scenario and is seen in today's world you might see it on the news or something like that.

White Noice Chapter 23-28

The story picks up a little more in this section as Jack finds Babbete has been hiding Dylar underneath the radiator cover. Jack eventually confronts her about this and she explains to him the entire story of how she is consumed with death and she takes these pills to help her not focus on them. But there were key things in the text that stuck out to me.

On page 171 Jack and Steffie are talking about calling Babbette's doctor and asking him about Dylar. In the text it says, "Call him at home," She said. "Wake him up. trick him into telling us what we want to know." First reading this I thought to myself that Steffie maybe wanted to call the doctor and have him tell them that Dylar was alright and that he prescribed it to Babbette so that they could feel better about the situation. But reading it a second time I got a different meaning from it. It seemed to me as if she wanted to call the doctor and coerce him into telling them everything he knew about Dylar wether it be good or bad. They wanted to force the doctor to say what they wanted to hear and not the actual truth of the matter. The word "trick" was a key word in this sentence. It does not say anything along the lines of "lets see what he says" or "get him to tell" but trick, implying that they think he will be reluctant to say anything about the medication so they are going to have to use a form of trickery in order to get him to talk. The real thing that caught my attention about this sentence was just the word structure in the sentence. Trick just implies to me that she felt some kind of necessity that the doctor wasn't going to be honest and they needed to resort to some other means of getting him to talk.

On page 177 Jack has confronted Babbette about the Dylar and they are discussing how he found it and that Steffie is worried about Babbette. In the middle of they page she immediately changes the subject of the conversation in an abrupt manner and just says, "Do you know what these cold gray leaden days make me want to do?" She then goes on to say she wants to become intimate with Jack. We discussed in class how she will change the subject when it becomes on her, but is she using sexuality to divert the attention? Many women have this power over significant others and they will exercise it to divert the attention on themselves. Because honestly as a guy who is going to say no to that, really? The point I am trying to make is that in my opinion when a woman uses sexual means to get out of a situation like that, they are very ashamed of what is being asked of them and want to have nothing to do with talking about it to the other person.

Once again the main recurring theme in these chapters is death. Babbette has made it very clear that she is consumed by it, almost like an OCD you could say. She has resorted to taking pills for a way to alleviate some of the pain she is obviously going through. What Dellilo thinks about death I'm not sure about but it is definitely the main theme of this book and I am curious to see what other things about death come up in the story later.

White Noise Chapter 21-22

Chapter 21 starts off on part two of the book called "The Airborne Toxic Event". This part of the book has more action than the previous chapters of the book. Also as in chapters there are key things that I caught while reading that have a very deep and profound meaning.

To start with Delillo seems to have a fascination with death it was talked about many times in Chapter 21 and 22. After Jack has filled his car up with gas and has been informed by the SIMUVAC personnel that the computers have many blinking stars next to his name indicating he is at a high risk he begins to struggle with the idea of death. on page 137 it says, "Death has entered." He goes on also to say, "It is when death is rendered graphically, is televised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself." This brings up a good point in that one does not like to think of death but when it is portrayed in a visual way we tend to pick up on it more and it becomes almost a depressing agent. As humans we are naturally very visible compared to other species and once again the only ones that know of our "immanent death". So some tend not to focus on it. But when the light is shined on it and you have to acknowledge it it is a weird and mysterious sense you get. You begin to wonder so many different things since no one can explain it. As in the story when he says ..."you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself." Can the idea of death become more psychological than death itself? Can the anticipation of it summed up over a lifetime may have greater affects on the body than actually dying? In Chapter 22 on page 162 it says, "It's strange in a way, isn't it,"..."that we can picture the dead." I noticed at the point it seems as though a question is being asked, but there is a period at the end. Wether the publisher made a mistake in the printing or Delillo meant to put the period or forgot I am not sure, that just struck me as odd but maybe it's a grammar rule I'm not aware of. This also refers to the visual aspect of "seeing death". You can see a dead person but is what your seeing really death in its true form or just the aftermath of what death is capable of?

On page 141 Jack says, "If there is a secular equivalent of sanding in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows, it would be watching children in their little bedrooms fast asleep." Religion has been hinted at int he book before but this one stuck out to me. Could possibly he be saying that his children bring him the same awe and wonder as a Catholic priest in awe of God's work? The next sentence only says. "Girls especially". Does he mean that maybe the wondrous awe of a female is something to be desired more than a male, in case that the male body is made for work and is brunt, but the female body is elegant and supple and much more aesthetically pleasing? Im not exactly sure what is meant by that but it could have subtextual meaning.

All in all this part of the story had "more" of a plot and it definitely picked up from previous chapters. Death is definitely a main part of this story and I'm curious to see what other parts it plays as the story tells itself out.

White Noise Chapters 13-20

I feel like in reading this book especially these chapters that many issues of the human way especially with death. Death is referred to many times in these chapters and also I feel there is a lot of discussion on dealing with issues in someone's life and how they deal with that.

In reading these chapters I have started to notice how the author says subtle things in the story wether or not they be of any importance I have noticed a few. On page 62 Jack is talking to Denise and Denise is worried about one of the pills Babbett is taking. Jack near the bottom of the page says .."Everybody takes something". He is referring to medications that he takes and that others take too. Is he implying everyone has some underlying condition wether it be for a mental problem, virus, or other ailment. Is he concluding to the fact that everyone has their own problems in their own ways and everyone deals with it somehow or another wether it be medication, drugs, or something else to deal with the stresses of life? Babbette says she can never sleep and has nightmares, this would make the reader believe this is what he is referring to trying to tell his child that people have problems sometimes and they need things to help coax them.

Another think that probably stuck out to me the most was on page 73. Near the bottom the book reads, "To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual to face dying alone. Crows came for this reason above all others." This to me stood out the most because as humans we are the only "animals" that realize their ultimatum which is dying at some point. Humans have an uncontrollable desire to be social almost as if to share in the suffering we know we will endure later. Does the crowd in the story believe if they are in a group it will be harder for death to single them out? What is the fascination of sharing in a suffering with other human beings. The outcome is still the same but something of the consolance of someone who knows what you are going through has many psychological effects.

On page 91 there is a man who is telling the story of a plane crash. He makes a very good point in his telling of the story about how the first pilot came over the loudspeaker and said, "We're falling out of the sky!" All the passengers were freaking out worried. Later on the next page the other pilot comes on saying "Crash landing, crash landing." Instantly the passengers fears subdue a little bit because of one word that was added on. Its amazing how one word can change emotions in someone wether it be on a small or large scale. The people are so afraid of death that they cling to any hope of longevity that they can get.

One last thing I noticed was in the story the author will throw random bits of nothing (that I can decipher anyways) in the story. On page 99 the author writes, "The emptiness, the sense of cosmic darkness." The next line says, "MasterCard, Visa, American Express." Unless the author is referring to somehow how those major credit cards can refer to cosmic darkness I'm not sure but I will look for more of those thru-ought the rest of the story and see if I see any correlationg

The Crying of Lot 49 Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5

These two chapters were the longest in the book. In this chapter Oedipa travels to Berkley to see Nefastis, the inventor of the machine that defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics. She tells Nefastis she thinks she is a sensitive. She tries to get the machine to work and cannot make the machine move. After this is done Nefastis says to her, " It's OK, Please don't cry. Come on in on the couch. The news will be on any minute. We can do it there." "Do what", she says. Nefastis replies, "Have sexual intercourse." Oedipa is seen as a sex object throughout the entire book. Always having men gawk at her and touch her. In the beginning of the book she has sex with Metzger because she is bored of her own sex life with her husband. This book has an underlying tone of sexuality becoming more care free than it had been in earlier years in America. The story takes place in different places in California. Back in the 50's and 60's this is where the major sexual revolution started in America. So easy to say that this book or any book around this time period would have a major underlying tone of sexuality. Oedipa was riding a bus to the airport she noticed on the back of the seat scribbling of the post horn with the word DEATH next to it. Next to that it said Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn. She also found papers saying, If you know what this means, you know where to find more; this was referring to the horn. These signs and symbols only further to her paranoia which becomes increasingly more evident throughout the rest of the book. Another odd occurrence happens while Oedipa was in the airport she saw a mother and son talking. The mother was telling the boy to make sure to send male via WASTE, saying the government will read her mail. As the boy leaves the mother the son the sound.."was kissing his mother passionately goodbye, using his tongue. Is Thomas Pynchon referring to incest in his story? Or could this be another underlying theme of sexuality that was becoming more acceptable in the US just like homosexuality was?

Chapter 6

Throughout the whole book you may notice there is many songs. Honestly I am not sure what this is for, maybe it is to put satirical humor because some of the songs are funny. Maybe the songs have a message in them to help the reader to realize more about the story. This chapter is mainly about how the Tristero system and its history. Sometimes going into such penial details about things. Also in this chapter though Oedipa becomes increasingly isolated and reverts to almost little or no human contact. She becomes increasingly paranoid about if Pierce had made this conspiracy of The Tristero. The book says, "He might himself have discovered the Tristero, and encrypted that in the will, buying into just enough to be sure she'd find it. Or he might even have tried to survive death, as a paranoia; as a pure conspiracy against someone he loved. Pierce's stamp collection is going to be auctioned off, as Lot 49. The auctioning off of it is called "crying" hence the title of the book The Crying of Lot 49. Oedipa wonders though if one of the bidders may be Pierce and he is still alive, only doing this as a cruel joke to her. There is no real ending to the book, the last line, "The auctioneer cleared his throat. Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49." This ending leaves much to the imagination no questions answered. Pynchon is leaving the story up for grabs for the reader to take whatever route they want to take for the ending.

The Crying of Lot 49 Chapters 3 and 4

Oedipa ends up sleeping with Metzger near the beginning of this chapter. She starts to thin of herself as Repunzal and that someone is going to come ask her to just let her hair down. She feels that if she can figure out the Tristero System she can get out of her tower and end captivity. She thinks that infedelity with Metzger will be the starting point of this. The rest of Chapter 3 discusses how Oedipa and Metzger go to a bar called the Scope. While there they meet a man named Mike Fallopian who is a member of the Peter Pinguin Society which is a very right wing society. Oedipa goes to the bathroom and sees a strange marking on the wall that says underneath "interested in fun, contact Kirby waste only. She has no idea what this means but writes it down and dismesses it for the time being. She goes to the table and hears the men discussing the postal service and talk about Fallopian's book. After this they travel to Lake Inverarity, one of Pierce's estates. They meet Manny di Presso who is trying to sue Inveraritys estate for one of his clients. His client gave Iverarity bones to make into a special charcoal . The Paranoids have come on this trip also and tell Oedipa that this sounds a lot like The Courier's Tragedy, a revenge drama. Oedipa and Metzger go to the play, after the show Oedipa goes backstage to speak with a man named Dribblette about the bones but they end up discussing the play instead of the bones.

Chapter 4

Oedipa reads the will again and notices it mention Yoyodyne, she goes to the plant and meets Clayton Chiclitz, and he gives her a tour. She comes upon an office and sees the Tristero symbol that she saw in the bathroom. The man in the office os Stanley Kotecks. He begins to tell her about a machine that defies The Second Law of Thermodynamics which says you cannot have perpetual motion. He says only sensitives can make the machine run. So Oedipa suspects she is a sensitive and goes to Berkeley to be tested. On her way to Berkeley she stops at Vesperhaven and old person home. She meats a man Mr. Toth. He shows her a ring he is in possession of and it has the post horn symbol she saw in the bathroom on it. She talks to Fallopian about this and he can see a connection between the major mail companys and the Indians. Oedipa feels like she is coming on to a mass conspiracy.