What are stories? This question is difficult to answer because there are many different directions that one could go with it. People are involved in stories, they make them up, shape them, and have the potential to be shaped by them. Stories are accounts of fictional or real individuals and events told for informational purposes or just as entertainment, often giving one a glimpse into a different world and leading the imagination down infinite paths. People everywhere are constantly telling true stories about their own lives and experiences. A story within a story are literary devices that often have symbolic and psychological significances for the characters in the outer story. When a story is told within another, it allows the author to
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When Oedipa discovers a possible secret society called Tristero, she eventually begins to see the diagrams of a muted horn (which she believes to be related) almost everywhere she goes. She believes that she’s found a plot and gets the sense that there is some type of revelation taking place around her, but she’s not sure what. It soon becomes apparent that the there are stories within stories within stories in the novel that leave her with a free range of new ideas around each turn of her journey. Although, it’s never truly revealed to the reader if there really is an alternate secret postal system that serves a sort of underground of private networks. One major clue she finds happens to be in a story in the form of a 17th-century play called The Courier’s Tragedy. This play not only gives insight on the history of the Tristero System, but also aids in the development of many of the ideas in the novel. When Oedipa goes to see the production, the word “Tristero” is mentioned in one of the characters lines. This automatically leads her to the conclusion that Tristero must be real because of it’s mention in a famous play and secret hints of it that she finds everywhere she looks. However, when she goes to speak with the director of the play about it, he tells her to stop overanalyzing …show more content…
Unlike the Unknown Narrator, Oedipa never finds the truth behind the stories that she’s looking for. She lets all of the external information consume her, essentially trapping her without her knowledge into a different reality, separate from everyone else. At the end of the novel, Pynchon leaves Oedipa in a room to wait for the mystery bidder in hopes of solving the conspiracy, however, for all anyone knows, that could be just another set up for the next clue as it had been throughout Oedipa’s quest. At the end of Surfacing, however, the narrator reclaims her integrity when she finally acknowledges her role in the abortion rather than blaming everything on others. In this way, she is able to reconnect with society, although it still isn’t apparent what she chooses to do
When Oedipa discovers a possible secret society called Tristero, she eventually begins to see the diagrams of a muted horn (which she believes to be related) almost everywhere she goes. She believes that she’s found a plot and gets the sense that there is some type of revelation taking place around her, but she’s not sure what. It soon becomes apparent that the there are stories within stories within stories in the novel that leave her with a free range of new ideas around each turn of her journey. Although, it’s never truly revealed to the reader if there really is an alternate secret postal system that serves a sort of underground of private networks. One major clue she finds happens to be in a story in the form of a 17th-century play called The Courier’s Tragedy. This play not only gives insight on the history of the Tristero System, but also aids in the development of many of the ideas in the novel. When Oedipa goes to see the production, the word “Tristero” is mentioned in one of the characters lines. This automatically leads her to the conclusion that Tristero must be real because of it’s mention in a famous play and secret hints of it that she finds everywhere she looks. However, when she goes to speak with the director of the play about it, he tells her to stop overanalyzing …show more content…
Unlike the Unknown Narrator, Oedipa never finds the truth behind the stories that she’s looking for. She lets all of the external information consume her, essentially trapping her without her knowledge into a different reality, separate from everyone else. At the end of the novel, Pynchon leaves Oedipa in a room to wait for the mystery bidder in hopes of solving the conspiracy, however, for all anyone knows, that could be just another set up for the next clue as it had been throughout Oedipa’s quest. At the end of Surfacing, however, the narrator reclaims her integrity when she finally acknowledges her role in the abortion rather than blaming everything on others. In this way, she is able to reconnect with society, although it still isn’t apparent what she chooses to do