Monday, March 23, 2009
Drugs as a Theme
All throughout the book, there was a big theme of drugs. Although the book takes place in the 1960's, drugs majorily contributed to every characters actions. Almost everyone around Oedipa seems to be on drugs, further contrubuting to the main "conspiracy" of the novel. The Drugs seem to be the main cause for Oedipa's downward struggle to keep her sanity. The drugs are the number one reason for the breaking down of Oedipa's marriage. First of all, all of the alcohol led to Oedipa's affair with the lawer. Mucho Maas was taking LSD to help fill the gap that the loss of his car lot left in his heart. This LSD usage led to Mucho not noticing his faining marriage. Oedipa's desire to fix herself and see a shrink put herself in an odd situation. The Shrink was also "tripping" on LSD and this ultimatly led to Oedipa not recieveing help for her internal struggle. I believe that drugs caused all of this chaos to begin. I believe that when Oedipa and Pierce broke up, Pierce began using drugs to cope with the break up. This could of led to him "tripping" severly and making this plan of tricking Oedipa into this whole "fake society." Drugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great observation on the drugs and how they could have been influencing everyone in the story. I agree with almost everything except I think that Pierce wasn't on drugs, just that he was crazy and rich enough to dream up this whole thing to curse Oedipa with.
ReplyDeleteThe history of LSD, its legality, & the experiments undertaken to ascertain its medical "usefulness" is very interesting, & pretty sordid. It was the first drug, I believe, that treated alcoholism with any success. The US government tried using it for mind control and as a chemical weapon, but it didn't really pan out. When subjects took the drug, in British military experiments for example, they came to the realization that fighting was contrary to the truth the drug helped them perceive.
ReplyDeleteBut if you think of it, why do people abuse substances like LSD? Do they want to just be in a constant state of being in another world, or do they actually want to kill themselves? To me, its just a poor way to seek attention.
ReplyDeleteJoshua Savianeso AKA Dr.Stewart