The Word Game in The Crying of Lot 49
             In Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 (TCL49), the author uses the multiplicity of language, in the form of words with conflicting definitions, conflicting connotations and puns, to construct multiple, often times conflicting meanings. The effect of these puns and words with conflicting meanings serve to connect the audience with Oedipa in the way that both are bombarded with information. On page 100 of the novel Oedipa, wandering for clues about the Trystero by taking on a voyeuristic role, encounters a plethora of "waste" associated characters. The connection between the reader and Oedipa surfaces again in the voyeuristic connotations associated not only with Oedipa, but also the act of reading. As readers, we are playing the voyeur to Oedipa and, in turn, all of the characters she encounters. This, in effect, serves to connect the audience with not only Oedipa, but also with these WASTE associated characters. The significance being that if we are associated with WASTE, then aren't we also outcasts. Pynchon's portrayal of the characters in this passage, on a broad level, focuses on imagery of searching in darkness through the connection of all of the figures encountered during this section with black or wandering. However, on a second glance, this section illustrates perfectly the idea of Pynchon's multiplicity of meaning as well as serving to connect Oedipa with these characters in an intimate way. The connection alludes not only to WASTE, but the ideas of conformity that WASTE seems to stand against. These ideas of nonconformity, when taken into the context of the period of the 1960's in which the book was conceived, seem to be a social call for a stand against drug use, which is portrayed in a negative fashion in that they are prescribed by a war criminal, and following the monopolistic overarching authorities, which in the novel takes on ...