Author: Carolyn

Art Spiegelman may well be “ahead of his time,” as he suggests, or perhaps he is able to express things better through his use of comix. The presentation of the book, at first glance, is deceptive. It looks like a large children’s book because of the thick pages, and since there are significantly less pages than in a novel, the reader might think that the read will be an easy one. But I found that each panel was so engaging with the different panels—old comic characters mixed with a photographic image of an Ahnold movie and the glittering, smoking towers. An interesting thing about this piece was even though it showed the towers collapsing on fire, it showed them whole; it showed their ghosts. They do not disappear until page 10, and even then, they fade into the background, a reminder of what used to be. I compare Spiegelman’s images to the media coverage at the time of 9/11, which just plastered the screens with images of the towers collapsing repeatedly, to the point where my body becomes overwhelmed with the utter despair at the constant reminder of the pain and suffering of innocent people that I turned on Animal Planet. Why? Because it was the only channel that did not have constant images of pain and suffering, and it was comforting to look at life forms that didn’t do this type of thing to each other. Spiegelman’s use of satire also helps to keep the reader from getting overwhelmed and draw attention to other issues that have come to light as a result of the attacks, like the “weapons of mass displacement.”

I found it timely that a report was released today by the 9/11 panel, stating that the government has failed in its efforts (or lack thereof) to prevent terrorist attacks. A sampling: “The panel’s members told reporters in Washington that Congress and the Bush administration shared blame for failing to act in these and other crucial areas, and they warned that continued delays could cost American lives in the event of another domestic terrorist attack.” This calls to mind White Noise, with its notions of rehearsing disaster. The first disaster has already occurred, but because proper action is not being taken by those that have the power, the panel members believe that “the terrorists will strike again.” I share Spiegelman’s sentiments of anger towards the government for diverting the public’s attention and not dealing with the cause of the attacks. Another troubling part of the piece was when he recounted a true story where he was asked to be super-American by stating his favorite foods, etc. When his answers didn’t fit the mold, he was told that the proper answers could be edited in. If this is true, as Spiegelman asserts, it is troubling because it means that when a crisis occurs, anyone who does not fit the mold of being apple-pie American becomes “other” and becomes a threat. This was the first graphic novel I read but it was surprisingly rich and layered.

Link to 9/11 article by Dan Eggen (from washingtonpost.com): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120500097.html

The film and the novel reminded me of White Noise in their focus on death. This time, the characters were not afraid of it, like Jack and Babette, but need to come close to it by fighting until they can barely cry out for it to stop. By testing their bodies to that extreme, they feel more alive and more prepared for death. The narrator claims he is dying when he cannot sleep, to attempt to have his doctor to take him seriously. His doctor does not give him the attention he needs, so he adopts the persona of someone who is dying by attending the support groups. There, his life is ephemeral and therefore more valuable; he is not taken for granted. The narrator could go to a plethora of support groups for people who are not dying (AA, gamblers anonymous, etc.) but he chooses to connect with people under these false pretences for two years. Even when Tyler has a gun in the narrator’s mouth, he assures him that they “won’t really die,” but will become immortal, become “legend” (1). Marla is obsessed with death too, attempting to kill herself, thinking she may have tumors, and declaring her affection for Tyler in terms of death, by saying she wants to have his abortion. Death is Marla’s way of getting attention, however fleeting, but it will not bring her the same power that it would narrator/Tyler.

Going along with the death aspect of Fight Club is the treatment of religion. God is a father figure in Western culture, and this God has given up on the middle children of history, according to Tyler, because of their troubled relationships with their fathers: “If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God” (177). Tyler then becomes a god to the fight club and project mayhem members and therefore thinks of himself and immortal, because he now has the power of all of the fathers of the men. At the end of the novel, God is a doctor in a mental institution, and the narrator has a realistic way of seeing humanity, as not crap, and not special, but just being. He finds the happy medium between the extremes. God doesn’t like his answer, but the narrator does not give this male authority figure ultimate power; instead he concludes, “you can’t teach God anything” (198).

I thought I was following this movie pretty well until I got to the last few minutes of it and everything I had been watching for the past hour was rewritten.  One thing that surprised me in the scene of the second October 2, 1988 was the figure drawing the face of Frank the rabbit.  I assumed the person drawing would be Donnie, because he was so troubled by him.  When I saw that it was Frank the person, I thought that he and Donnie were probably similar on some level because they were both troubled teenagers.  Why was Frank driving to Grandma Death’s house on October 30?  He seemed to be misunderstood, like Donnie, so perhaps this was another reason why he was able to talk to Donnie and have such a powerful effect on him.  The movie creates suspense about Frank’s identity as a real person when the viewer sees the message on the refrigerator on the night of the party, claming that Frank was there and went to get beer.  The viewer is uncertain as to whether Donnie is now speaking for Frank and trying to acknowledge his presence, or if there is another Frank that other people can see.  At this point the movie is leading up to the end of the world, so the partial unveiling of Frank creates additional suspense.

Donnie’s death by the airplane engine falling on him seemed to be ironic to me because it showed that his life did change events around him.  Donnie was the only student at his high school who could see through Jim Cunningham and was not afraid to speak about it.  Donnie’s destruction of Cunnigham’s house led to the discovery of the kiddie porn and may have ended up saving children from a sexual predator.  Donnie also was a positive influence on Gretchen—he was her safe place when her mom went missing, and when the other kids mentioned her abusive stepfather, she turned to Donnie to create a beautiful moment so that it would erase the pain she felt.  On the other side, Donnie’s insistence on visiting Grandma Death did lead to Gretchen’s death and if events continued to progress the way they did, his mother and little sister would be harmed as well.  The ending was almost like a more realistic (and bizarre) version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” where you see the impact one life has had on people except for Donnie Darko it was only the impact his life made over a few weeks.  But was he more important and better remembered dead than alive?  He seemed to think so, but I wonder how the rest of the month of October 1988 would be without him.  Finally, one action that confused me at the end was Gretchen’s waving to Mrs. Darko.  Why does she wave, normally a happy gesture of recognition, to a woman whose son has just been killed in a freak accident, a woman whom she does not even know?  Does she sympathize with someone in that much pain?  I wasn’t sure.

One thing that struck me about the novel (besides recognizing the parts with the airplane and simulation that we had discussed before in class) was Jack’s interaction with the doctors in the novel.  He advises taking Wilder to the doctor when he and Babette cannot stop the child from crying, justifying the need for a doctor because crying is a basic human condition.  The suggestion of just going to the doctor escalates the crying problem into a crisis.  Doctors seem to have a power element for both Jack and Babette, make them more aware of their behavior and more nervous about it.  Doctors have the power to proclaim what causes death, and to delay death.  A doctor determines that Gladys Treadwell “died of lingering dread” after wandering the mall for four days with her brother.  This does not seem to be a true medical cause, but because it is a doctor’s diagnosis, it is not questioned.  Jack wants doctors to solve the problem of explaining his wife’s mystery drug and also helping him cure his own fear of death.  The doctors also have the ability to see Jack as “the sum total of [his] data,” because his information is stored in a computer and can be analyzed impersonally to give him the rating of “pulsing stars,” meaning he is going to die, but no one will give him more information than that.  Computers, not humans, take responsibility for determining Jack’s outcome; it is left to humans to deliver the news to him.  Jack’s regular visits to the doctor make him a “professional patient” but the visits do not seem scientific as much as a dialogue in which little information is revealed.  The doctor says that Jack has high potassium levels, but he won’t specify whether this is good or bad but also won’t explain some of the options for the good (the blood sample could have been hemolyzed) or bad (indication of kidney failure).  By not giving Jack information about his condition, he enables his fear of death to continue, for Jack has no control over it.  When Jack goes to the clinic for further evaluation, he wants to know that the typical response of the other patients is, then gives the same answer.  He makes himself fit the mold so that he can identify with other people, even if (or especially because) that puts him at risk for death.  By giving answers based on what the printout says about him, he validates the conglomeration of data the doctors are judging him by.  It seems to me that Jack likes the drama of knowing that death is going to come sooner than he had thought, even though the doctors don’t know what the effects of the toxic exposure are.  It gives him meaning as a regular person, not a Hitler scholar who creates a persona to be himself, but an unfortunate victim who has had contact with the unknown.

I found that of Moulthrop’s works, I preferred Pax to Hejirascope. I liked the freedom of choice that both offered in terms of the player’s clicks determining the narrative, however I felt that because Hejirascope was all text, it seemed less personal and connected. I liked that there were people in Pax, even if those people were simulations, they were simulations with names and sentiments (even if they are created) so it was easier for me to become more involved in the text. I also liked the fact that Pax had a sense of closure, that the screen began darkening to warn the viewer that the text was changing (like when you know you only have 20 pages left of the book you are reading, so the ending must be coming up soon) and then the screen announced the “end of the world, please insert token to continue.” This pairing of seriousness and playfulness can trigger the player to reflect on the situations he considers to be real but may in fact be simulations.

Moving on to the Poster article, one thing that I found was the discussion of the role of electronic writing. He says “electronic writing also subverts the culture of print.” It is true that electronic writing allows for easier access to the information (who can complain about the ease of accessing scholarly articles online). However, I still find it necessary to print electronic texts so as to have the writing in my hands and be able to mark it so that I know what I deemed to be important. When we were given this reading assignment, for example, the article was available via online sources so we did not even need to go to the library. Yet we were instructed to print out the article so that we can have it in front of us, with our notes and annotations. I wonder if the need for printed material will lessen as new generations become accustomed to electronic texts.

One part of the Baudriallard article that captured my attention was his discussion about work, that people work because they feel that they have to but the “scenario of work is there to conceal the fact that the work-real, the production of work-real, has disappeared.” This makes me think Office Space where the main character has a job in business but ultimately is not producing anything worthwhile, he sits in a cube with other cube-dwellers and doesn’t ponder the implications of it until he is forced to come to terms with that missing part of himself. The main character is happy at the end of the movie as a construction worker, because he is actually producing a tangible good and can immediately see the effects of his efforts. Office Space is popular because it is funny but because it also strikes a nerve and people are aware on some level that their work may not be as “real” as they would like for it to be.

One of Benjamin’s main issues with a reproduction of a piece of art is that this copy does not have the connection to the artwork’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (220). For me, this argument seemed to be placing too much emphasis on the exact history and time, and overlooking other reasons why people look at art and want reproductions of it. If you are reproducing something, especially a famous work of art, you will know the approximate time period of when the work was produced, and oftentimes, a signifier of a piece of art is that it is “timeless” and therefore would not need to be bound by the constraints of when it was created. If it is truly great art, we should be able to appreciate it no matter when it was created. Also, comparing a reproduction to the real thing would prove as an interesting comparison to see how the elements have affected the piece of art, especially if it is a statue or something outside. For example, many great Renaissance paintings have dulled over the years and were more recently restored to their original glory, but people were used to the faded colors from before. Comparing the old and the new would help students understand how works of art get damaged over time, and by making reproductions of both old and new available, the public could choose which color scheme they preferred. Art is subjective, and memory is unreliable, so why not have the ability and the choice to remember something the way you choose? I found Benjamin’s attitude to be snobby especially when he said that art becomes less valued when it is made available to more people. Isn’t the point of art to expose it to people so they will appreciate it and prompt new thoughts or ideas? If someone lives in a remote area, how often will they be able to see works of art, compared to someone who lives in New York City? Shouldn’t everyone be able to have some access to art, even if it is not the original?

I wonder what Benjamin would think of Photoshop, a program that can transform a picture into individual pixels so that it can be manipulated so precisely, it can be difficult to tell which is the original and which is the manipulation. He would probably be apalled, but I am just amazed at all the things one small program can accomplish. Our technology has evolved so much since this article was written, and those advancements are almost always portrayed in a positive light (think of how big cell phones were 10 years ago) that his arguments (as well as Aldous Huxley’s speech against technology in the footnotes) provide a change in perspective to challenge these views.

One theme that ran through the novel was the importance of identity, and the factors that create it. Milkman inherits his father’s name, as his father inherited his father’s name, but it does not have meaning to him. To Milkman, Macon Dead is the name for a man focused on wealth and property, even if he acquires these things at the cost of his friendship with other people within the community. Just being Macon Dead’s son makes Milkman an outcast, with Guitar as his only friend. Once Milkman rebels against his father by going to see Pilate, he learns more about the other Macon Dead, his grandfather, but does he does not feel a strong connection to him until he learns his true name, Jake, and the story of his father. History is important, both generations of history and the background given in the novel when Morrison reveals how Milkman wanted to fly like Robert Smith. Discovering that his great-grandfather had that ability and tried to bring the next generation with him fills the void in Milkman’s identity that he had been trying to eradicate with money and women. Freed from being “Dead,” Milkman feels that he belongs in this community with so many members of his family and without the sins of his father to pay for. Learning more about the men in his family gives Milkman opportunity to find a male in his family other than his father to look up to.

For Milkman and other characters in the novel, being part of the community is important, because they decide your name no matter what your parents called you at birth, hence Guitar and Empire State. Perhaps Ruth and Macon Dead keep their names because of the respect the community has for her father and their money. I also thought it was interesting that about half the time in the book Lena is referred to as “Magdalene called Lena.” This shows that she has not fully assimilated into the community, as she remains sheltered in her parents’ house and goes by two names. She seems like a flat character until she stands up to Milkman and serves as the catalyst to get him to leave Michigan. Milkman does not have a strong sense of identity at this point but even worse, he does not realize how poorly he treats his family. I liked how the female characters in the Dead family gained depth as the book progressed—the reader learned more about Ruth’s past, a different story from what Macon said about her, Corinthians lead a double life because the standards her father created could not be met, and Lena lashed out at Milkman and spoke for all of them.

To respond to Kira’s question, I was also wondering the significance of the novel to the book of the Bible of the same name and I think one parallelism is that its story is not often discussed. The Bible’s Song of Solomon is sensual, a dialogue between lovers, a natural part of life but not something that goes over so well with some Christians so it is ignored. We know it’s out there, we know it happens, but we don’t acknowledge it. The same can be said of African American’s stories. We know there is a rich past and so many stories to tell, ones not found in the traditional history books, or even the Western canon, but these stories are not discussed. Morrison creates a world and brings it to a large audience so that it can be acknowledged.

Here’s a link to Biblical Song of Solomon:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/Song_of_Solomon.html

  I thought the epigraph to the left of page one (from R. D. Laing’s The Policics of Experience) deserves some discussion.  Its placement on the left side a two-page spread, as opposed to on a page by itself undermines its importance, yet it sets the tone for how Russ perceives male-female relationships and expresses them in the novel.  It is easy for the reader to overlook this passage from a 1967 book in order to begin the main text (I admit I did at first).  However, this brief excerpt highlights major points of discussion for Russ.  Laing, using the names Jack and Jill (notice the “J” theme and how nicely that works out) as examples, says that Jack has the power to “invalidate [Jill’s] experience” and this sense of a woman needing to be validated is expressed later in the book, when Russ is talking about dating rituals and the need for women to have men acknowledge their existence.  Joanna sums this up when she says that she has said to men: “Love me, Approve me, Define me, Regulate me” (140).  She was at one point dependent on a male to define who she was.

  Jack, Laing continues, also has the ability to make the Jill doubt herself and question that an experience ever existed, by “shift[ing] the modality of her experience from memory to imagination.”  Jeannine, the most conventionally feminine of all the characters (her name resembles the word feminine as well—perhaps that is why she gets so mad when she is called Jeannie, because her name loses some of its audio ties to the adjective she identifies so closely with, or perhaps because no one is listening to her and her needs), has this experience of her memory losing credibility when she decides she wants to marry Cal despite all the inadequacies of their relationship, because she wants to be married.  She is daydreaming about being able to tell her mother she is going to have a baby (within the confines of wedlock of course) and “Cal himself hardly figures in this at all, for Jeannine has forgotten his laconism, his passivity, his strange mournfulness…” (131).  I think there are definitely people like this in society today, who get married to be married, but often times, men who have been divorced get remarried more quickly than their spouses to be married and to have someone take care of them, fulfill the role that Jeannine does for Cal (doing the dishes, all the cleaning because who else will do it), so this marriage for marriage’s sake has evolved in the past 30 years but still reinforces the “angel of the home” expectation of women.

  The last section of Laing explains how this type of manipulating another person continues because you question the sincerity of the accuser: “How can you think such a thing?” and then by placing that doubt and guilt in the accuser’s head, you make them want to prove that they don’t think that way at all.  This allows the cycle to continue, so there are multiple passages in the book where men make women are made to feel guilty and so the cycle of inequality continues. A more extreme example of this is how rape is the woman’s fault because her skirt was too short, she looked at the guy, etc.  Russ is calling the reader’s attention to the fact that society is the way it is partly because of men, and partly because women allow themselves to be manipulated by men.

I wanted to comment on the idea of eyes and glasses as a way to discern the truth in the movie.  Leonard’s job as an insurance investigator required him to know if people were lying to him about their claims.  He said that he had to look people in the eyes to know if they were telling the truth, and he continues to use this method after the accident and he cannot trust anyone.  However, this method is unreliable, as is the “truth” that he ascertains from it, because whoever is talking to him only has to deceive him for a few minutes, until he cannot remember them anymore.  Glasses also symbolize hiding the truth, as they block the eyes and prevent Leonard from looking the person in the eye.  Natalie wears sunglasses when they meet in the restaurant and he has to ask her to take them off so he can know if she is being truthful or not.  Teddy always wears glasses, and this aligns with Leonard’s note on the back of Teddy’s picture, not to believe his lies.  However, the viewer sees the story unfolding from Leonard’s point of view and has the advantage of being able to remember what he is shown, but cannot know for sure if any information received from Teddy or Natalie is to be trusted.  Natalie sums this up when she tells Leonard, “You can question everything—you can never know anything for sure.”  This applies to the audience as well.  We know the events that have happened, that Leonard killed both Teddy and Jimmy Grantz, and probably others as well, but we do not know for sure the true circumstances that led him to that point.  “The world doesn’t just disappear when you close your eyes, does it,” Leonard asks at one point.  But for him, it does, and not just when he closes his eyes, but after a certain amount of time, since he has to re-orient himself continually because of his condition.

The movie is definitely circular in its plot and series of events.  It is also self-aware, as Teddy warned Leonard that a bad cop was setting him up and that bad cop turned out to be Teddy himself.  He was warning Leonard about himself, but without revealing his identity until the climax of the film.  Returning to the circular chain of action in the film, however, if Teddy was the one keeping Leonard going, with new John Gs to find so he has a reason to exist and thus not end up like Sammy Jenkins, what happens now that Teddy is dead?  Leonard’s tattoo shows that the man he is after has the license plate that Teddy has, so without that leading to a new person, will he just go in circles, finding someone who no longer exists?  Will he write himself a new note to tell himself his revenge mission is complete?  If so, then is his destiny to become Sammy Jenkins, the fate he was trying so hard to avoid that he altered his own version of his memories?

Bell hooks talks about the sense of identity in postmodern criticism, calling for it to be revised so that marginalized voices may be heard, and that the “narrow constricting notion of blackness” may be removed.  She knows that there is a gap in the literature as well as the criticism, and motivates her readers to fill that niche by critiquing the standard so that “new possibilities for the construction of the self and the assertion of agency” can be realized.  Her article brings up the point that we may think that we have progressed as a literary society beyond the standard works by dead white men, but it is not enough.  There are different points of view that need to be expressed, but they need to be able to have an audience willing to read what is written.  On this note, I wonder if any niche press has published anything along these lines?  Since the article was written fifteen years ago, I am interested to know if there have been any gains along this end.

Moving on to The Intuitionist, I thought the novel’s structure and scattered choice sentences were highly effective ways to keep the reader turning the pages and also uncovering what was behind the incident with the elevator crash.  The first line of the book tells the reader what the inciting incident is: “It’s a new elevator, freshly pressed to the rails, and it’s not built to fall this fast” (1). The narrator becomes almost protective of Lila Mae and says “She doesn’t know yet” on page nine, and again on page 15.  Whitehead builds up suspense to suggest the magnitude of the elevator accident.

I thought the ending of the novel seemed a bit optimistic, compared to the no-resolution postmodernism style of Crying of Lot 49.  Fulton randomly writes Lila Mae’s name down in his notebook, yet this chance action to a series of events that will result in his notebooks being uncovered, and she will be able to reveal Fulton’s true dream when the time is right.  I did like that the novel ended with the promise of change, and I thought that having the elevator compared to Lila Mae, giving her permission to be human.

This novel calls for the reader to question many concepts, including the definitions of insanity and reality. In the beginning of the book, we learn that George is sent to Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment for drug abuse, but the reason he is sent to Haber is because the medical school sends him “the nuts they [can’t] crack” (16). At that moment, the question of George’s sanity emerges; before that he was just a guy with a prescription drug problem.
What does it mean to be insane? In this book, it means that your version of history and reality is not the same as everyone else’s. Society defines what insane is, and if George is the only one with memories of how things used to be, his version of the past does not mesh with society’s memories of history and therefore his memories must be incorrect. This ties into the history aspect of postmodernism we were discussing the first day of class. History is important in this novel because your memories of the past determine how you view the present. George needs his history to be validated by someone else in order for him to trust his mind.
When he first starts seeing Haber and the psychologist denies that the picture on the wall has changed (from Mt. Hood to a horse), Orr recognizes that he is “alone: knowing that he was insane and knowing he was not insane, simultaneously and intensely” (35-36). If he simply accepts other people’s version of reality, denies what he knows, he is not insane. He flirts with the line between sane and insane when he later decides to ignore his memory that came with the new reality he dreamt: “He was aware that in thus relegating to irreality a major portion of the only reality, the only existence, that he in fact did have, he was running exactly the same risk that the insane mind runs: the loss of the sense of free will” (146). At another point in the novel, George tries to communicate to Haber that he does not have the power to change the world the way Haber wants, that he is not being difficult, but does in fact lack that aspect of control over his dreams. So if George does not have that free will, does that make him insane? He is being controlled by the memories of worlds that have continued to change over four years. He believes that the world has to be left alone, so free will does have to be surrendered in the sense of Haber’s attempts to create a Utopian society, because “We’re in this world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try to stand outside things and run them, that way…there is a way but you have to follow it” (136).
By the end of the novel, George and Haber have changed places to a degree. Haber is in a mental asylum because he cannot reconcile the “unreality” he knows with the way the world is because of his dreams. Haber is a higher degree of insane because he frightens the other patients just by being there. He has become a monster because he used recklessly used technology to change the world for the better and it has backfired. He has free will in a conscious state but not in his dreams, so he succumbs to insanity while George is freed because he asked for help when he dreamt and was able to cure himself. Only by giving up control was he able to stop his dreams and be able to gain control again. Le Guin punishes Haber with a severe degree of insanity because he would not give up control.

I agree with Kira that the novel was circular and I found a great example of this just in the conversations Oedipa has with other people. When she and Metzger are watching the movie he starred in as a child, he talks about being an actor and lawyer, and how they end up getting blurred: “A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor” (21-22). Then Metzger goes on to discuss a movie based on his life story, with his actor-lawyer friend playing the part of him. He sums the film up by saying “light can’t fatigue it, it can be repeated endlessly” (22). In this passage, Pynchon could be seen as pointing out that all the basic storylines have been done, so they will just continue to repeat themselves. It’s the challenge of the creator to bring something new to them.
I was glad to see discussion about the ending of the book, because I did not know what to make of the lack of resolution. The ambiguous ending is another facet of postmodernism we discussed in class, so I was somewhat prepared for it, but still felt the need to go back and see if there was a clue somewhere that gave an answer one way or another as to whether or not W.A.S.T.E. was real, but there is enough evidence for it to either exist or to be an elaborate ruse. Fallopian suggests to Oedipa that she has been set up, which has never crossed her mind before, but after he says this, she begins to question the validity of everything. There is an answer to the question of W.A.S.T.E.’s existence, and knowing who the bidder for lot 49 is would probably lead to something more, but the novel leaves the reader without that knowledge. So Pynchon is saying that the resolution is not as important as the way Oedipa’s life has changed while she has been trying to unearth details about this alternative postal service.
The book was ironic throughout, but it even ended in irony by only revealing what the title meant at the end of the book, so title refers to what happens after the book ends, not what happens throughout the book (again, the circular nature of the book). So is the thought of W.A.S.T.E. being real enough to redeem the life that she leads? One passage makes it appear that she could have “stumbled… onto a real alternative to exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of every American” Oedipa knows, including herself (141). If the whole search for meaning behind the trumpet sympbol was a ruse, was there a deeper purpose behind it? After thinking about it and how all the men in her life have abandoned her, Oedipa feels a deep sense of despair. Perhaps Pierce wanted her to feel grief, about something, even if it wasn’t directly about his death, so that he set all of this up when he died. Like Oedipa, I think that if it was all a set-up, “it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke” (141). I’m an optimist, though, so maybe that is coming through too much.