[Posted by: NICOLE & RACHEL]
Through Oedipa's fascination with the plays and Metzger's job as an actor, along with her own dreams, she seems to have a desire to live in a fantasy world. And yet, despite that fascination, she still seems to want a certain amount of control over her imaginary world. How do these two desires contrast each other and how does it apply to the IA's involvement with love? When Oedipa is talking with Arnold Snarb, he explains being a member of the IA as isolates from love. Do you think Oedipa's ability to live in a fantasy world allows her to be isolate from love? Do you think she would want to be isolate?
One scene that stood out to me about Oedpia's desire to live in a imaginary world is how she refused to take sleeping pills. This scene fascinates me because even though the pills let Oedipa fantasize, she seeks escapism through over means such as with plays. Oedipa is a woman who wishes to have control over her fantasies. I think this is because Oedipa does not see her dreams as her real fantasies; they are fantasies that happen beyond her control.
ReplyDeleteRegarding IA's involvement with love, I think Oedipa is isolated from love. She uses her new job as a co-executor to distance herself away from Mucho. And with Metzger, the affair feels more sexual than it is genuine love. It seems that Oedipa views love as a fantasy that she wishes to control. Love is an unconditional desire to be with someone. There is a scene where Oedipa and Metzger play "Strip Bottle" and Oedipa puts on various layers of clothes to rig the game in her favor. Oedipa wants to control the fantasy of it on her own terms even though it is difficult to so,. I think highlights the contrasting desires Oedipa has.
Oedipa suffers from a lack of love in her life. Her husband is now absent, working the KCUF radio station, and never gave her much attention to begin with. In her imagination, she lives in a world in which she has access to love, yet is still in control of it. This contrasts to the IA's view on love, which essentially gives up on the idea. Her fantasies do not allow Oedipa to be isolate from love, but achieve the opposite - create love where there was none.
ReplyDeleteI think Oedipa's need to live in a fantasy world has a lot to do with her need to satiate her boredom. At the beginning of the book, it seemed like she was stuck in a very stagnant and boring marriage where nothing much happened besides her husband being anxious and complaining about his job. I think in part she goes to San Narciso and involves herself with Metzger and all of the conspiracy theories because she needs to create an alternate reality that will entertain her. And as soon as this alternate reality loses its interesting quality, she has to keep creating even more intense and strange fantasy worlds that will pique her interest more, and it just becomes a cycle of fantasy creation. Its clear that she likes to be in control of these fantasies and make sure that they go the way she wants, but this becomes problematic when the reality that she's living in doesn't match up to the fantasy that she has created within it. When this happens, she loses control of the situation because things aren't matching up the way she expected. For example, when Oedipa and Metzger play the strip game in the hotel on the first day that they meet, Oedipa tries to take control of the situation and puts on a ton of clothes. She wants to be the one deciding what happens in this strange romantic fantasy she has in order to keep herself from being bored. However, even though she tries to remain in control of the fantasy, reality comes crashing down and she ends up sleeping with Metzger and giving up the dominant position. I think that these fantasies allow her to become isolated from love because she uses them to escape from the one person who supposedly loves her (Mucho) into the arms of another man (Metzger) who she has a purely sexual relationship with. Creating fantasies allows her escape from her boring reality, which coincidentally also includes the people who love her.
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