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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Under what name did Metzger perform when he was a child actor?

2. In a letter from a legal firm, what does Pierce Inverarity request Oedipa do for him?

3. What is the huge complex surrounded by barbed-wire-topped fence, its entrance flanked by sixty-foot missiles with the name Yoyodyne, Inc. lettered on each nose cone, that Oedipa passes as she drives into San Narciso?

4. What happens when a heavy, pale young man carrying a mail sack appears in the doorway of the bar where Oedipa and Metzger are talking to Mike Fallopian?

5. Fallopian tells Metzger that what two ideas are part of the same creeping horror?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the manager of the Echo Courts Motel.

2. Where did Tony Jaguar get the bones that he sold to Beaconsfield Cigarettes?

3. According to Mike Fallopian, what eventually happened to Peter Pinguid?

4. As Oedipa seeks a motel to escape the illusion of speed and freedom that driving provides, to what does she compare the road?

5. What do the Paranoids set outside the door of Oedipa's room?

6. What is the metaphor Oedipa is referring to about The Trystero and the costumes of historical figures?

7. How is the sign advertising the Echo Courts in the likeness of Marilyn Monroe?

8. Why does the moment Oedipa sees San Narciso from a hilltop have a religious quality to her?

9. As she is losing the game of Strip Botticelli, what does Oedipa remove first?

10. What is scribbled next to a message advertising the WASTE group on the bathroom wall of The Scope?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Crying of Lot 49 mixes elements taken from several different genres, or types of literature. Discuss each of these in terms of its use in the novel.

1) The picaresque novel, such as Don Quixote

2) The Jacobean and Elizabethan revenge plays, such as Hamlet

3) Mythology

4) Fairytales

5) Historical texts

Essay Topic 2

Satire is the literary criticism of people and society through ridicule. Pynchon gives a satirical view of many of society's institutions in The Crying of Lot 49. Choose two of the following and discuss the use of each fully through characters, setting, plot and theme.

1) Law and lawyers

2) Psychiatry

3) Industrial corporations

4) Universities and scholarly research

5) Federal institutions such as the postal system

6) Urban sprawl

7) American pop culture

8) Capitalism

Essay Topic 3

The presence of numerous male characters in the narrative who are unable to truly love Oedipa alludes to Freud's theory of the Oedipal complex.

1) Explain Freud's theory and how it relates to The Crying of Lot 49.

3) Show specifically what each of these male characters represents to Oedipa and how they abandon her: Metzger, Driblette and Mucho.

(see the answer keys)

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