Blog Post #5 - Needle

As I started reading The Crying of Lot 49, I realized there was a lot more thought and meaning hidden deeper into the text than I thought there was going to be. I read through the first two chapters initially, but found myself going back to re-read the chapters a second time to fully grasp the events and possibly find any satire or symbolism that I possibly missed.

I came across a passage, where the town of San Narciso is described, and found it to be symbolic, perhaps. The passage is from the bottom of page 13 through the bottom of page 15. Here a few specific portions from that large section:

“But it had been Pierce’s domicile: the place he’d begun his land speculating…, and so put down the plinth course of capital on which everything afterward had been built, however rickety or grotesque, toward the sky…would set the spot apart. But, if there was any vital difference between it and the rest of Southern California, it was invisible on first glance.”

I think this passage is pretty symbolic of Pierce and his personality, perhaps. This city is a big city – high skyscrapers, big buildings, but most of them built poorly and grotesque-looking. The passage makes it seem that Pierce didn’t care what it looked like – he just wanted the city, “his” city, to become and icon in California. So, when Oedipa arrived, she became aware of the “real” city: smog everywhere, buildings surrounded by barbed wire, and large industries.

The next short passage is on the bottom of page 15. It is as follows:

“What the road really was, was this hypodermic needle, inserted somewhere into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A., keeping it happy, coherent, protected from pain, or whatever passes, with a city, for pain.”

I think this quote is very significant explaining San Narciso. It basically says that this city was created to be an outlet of all things bad that are associated with Los Angeles. San Narciso is a city created to nourish L.A. and keep it pure and protected from evils; evils that take haven in San Narciso. So, this shows what kind of town that San Narciso is and how the feelings of the characters, while in this city, are justified.