Postmodernity In Oedipa's The Crying Of Lot 49

Today, many people define society based on the modernity and postmodernity movements. The definition of the modernity movement lies in the characteristics of modern societies that have capitalistic economies and democratic political structures that are highly industrialized. Postmodernity is almost the same as modernity, but the communication of technology and process of information included in the postmodernity movement differentiates it from modernity. Loosely stated, postmodernity is the state or condition of society said to exist after modernity. The new process of information and communication of technology creates singular ways of perceiving and constructing the world in the postmodernity movement. Although society has made these transformations, which some may …show more content…
In fact, Oedipa, the main character in The Crying of Lot 49, was trying to perceive and construct the world around a conspiracy, similar to how a television perceives the world in terms of image. Her actions fueled her desire to have the capacity to question and merge many aspects of the world together. Oedipa recognized that the world of The Crying of Lot 49 was fragmented. For example, she recognized in the novel that the world contained diverse groups of people that did not fit together. Some of these included: druggies, rock singers, lawyers, actors, Mafia, and the other century cultures. The novel clarifies that these groups weren’t bonded to the elements of this world. Oedipa recognized that the society had no bond; and, therefore, she tried to place these elements into a bond through structure. Her dream was to create “constellations”. The constellations metaphor addressed how Thomas Pynchon might believe humans impose order on something that does not have any order at all. Oedipa would later learn in the novel that her dream of order would not be