Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, said: “First tell yourself what you would like to be; and then do what you have to do. Defining one's personal identity may coincide with this ancient Stoic principle, but what is not mentioned is the human transformation that must occur to realize this aspiration. In both Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, there is a search for personal definition that requires breaking the social conventions of a chaotic culture. The Invisible Man is trapped in a world where his grandfather believes that the best response to the white man's racism is unparalleled and sincere kindness. In The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Maas lives in a community consumed by the daily grind of suburban life. While both the Invisible Man and Oedipa Maas have been alienated from their respective cultures, Invisible derives a personal identity as Oedipa Maas continues to struggle in a world disintegrating around her due to her inability to connect and communicate with her society chaotic. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning of the novel, Invisible introduces himself to the reader as a black man who has been forgotten by society; he lives underground and steals electricity from a power company for his fantastically well-lit lair. The company knows someone is consuming an exorbitant amount of electricity, but the culprit is strangely invisible to the rest of the grid. He opens his relationship with the reader as a man forgotten by society, for better or for worse. Invisible says: “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquid, and you might even say I possess a mind. I am invisible, you understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (3). The withdrawal from society that Invisible experiences is not that of a peaceful sabbatical, but rather an anxious fragmentation from the world he desperately wants to interact with. Sometimes he is not sure of his own being, and must continually prove to himself what others do not recognize. This constant struggle for recognition is sometimes painful, as Invisible claims its efforts cause fatigue. He says, “You suffer from the need to convince yourself that you exist in the real world” (4). The invisible does not experience the fulfillment that is symptomatic of human interaction, and its absence causes pain and tiredness that prevent him from reaching the seemingly blind society from which he has been excluded. The Crying of Lot 49's Oedipa was also segregated from society, but not in the same capacity as Invisible. She's certainly 'visible' to the rest of society, but she's cast herself in the role of “Rapunzel, a brooding girl who is somehow, magically, captive among the pines and salt mists of Kinneret, searching for someone to tell her hey , let your hair down” (10). While Invisibile desperately tries to get noticed, especially by the power company, his presence remains unknown. Oedipa's absence, or the buffer between her, society, and the adventures of her dreams, has an internal basis. He builds fortress around his daily actions and only lets his guard down when the time is right. For Invisible, the barriers he faces are external and based on the thoughts and judgments of those around him. However, as Invisible, Oedipa will gain knowledge through new experiences that will break down the walls of her isolation, but it remains to be seen whether she will develop a personal identity. We know that the Invisible Man's beginning is really the end, and the end the beginning. At the end of the novel, he comes full circle and lives underground, perhaps in preparation to take his first courageous steps into society as a man comfortable with his own identity. However,he has no such control over his personality at first, nor does he have the common sense to pick his battles. At the beginning he is a man who is openly invisible to society and presents himself as such. However, he does not always handle precarious situations as a man who knows he is invisible to society would. He mercilessly punches a man who curses him; he hits the man's chin with his forehead and kicks him repeatedly. This is a departure from the innocent and intimate nature where the reader first sees Invisible as a man with no hold in society. His violence shows the immaturity of his feelings; seeks to force man to recognize himself as human through brute force, rather than by making a meaningful contribution to society. However, Invisible states that his people were caught in the heat of an altercation and that fighting is not his normal response to confrontation. He states: “Most of the time… I'm not… overtly violent. I remember that I am invisible and I walk slowly so as not to wake up those who are sleeping... However, over time I have learned that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without them realizing it" (5). In any case, when he does not resort to violence, he resorts to his own invisibility to carry on his "fight" which, at least at the beginning of the novel, he considers necessary. Invisible has been alienated from his own culture. Therefore, he must find a way to deal with the chaotic environment around him. When he brings Mr. Norton to The Golden Day sports and gaming house, Invisible is literally and figuratively forced into an environment foreign to him. He is forced to take Mr. Norton to the institution because the trustee needs medical attention, but he did not expect the rebellious atmosphere of The Golden Day. Here he is not invisible (like everyone else is black), but rather scolded by the vet for his actions. The vet believes that neither Mr. Norton nor the Invisible One are behaving sincerely towards the other: they are simply acting out parts that will lead them towards their supposed destiny. He says: “[You] both can't understand what's happening to you. You cannot see, hear or smell the truth of what you see, and you, in search of destiny! It's classic! And the boy, this automaton, is made of the very mud of the region and sees much less than you. Poor stumblers, neither can see the other. For you he is a mark on the scoreboard of your successes, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less a black and amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force. (95) In the midst of the chaos - and its normal disengagement effect - Invisible hears for one of the first times a story different from that of his grandfather. The vet berates Invisible for his "yes sir, no sir" mentality towards white people in charge, but Invisible later wishes he could tell Mr. Norton how ashamed he was of the frenetic atmosphere of The Golden Day. Rather, he believes that the The white man's approval will bring him the social forum he desires. Although he has only just begun to define himself, Invisible still believes at this point that he can bring about change as a servant of others. Invisible faces an invariable struggle to please those around him, in hopes of gaining the accolades of others and perhaps increasing his own. self-esteem. When Invisible joins the Brotherhood, he feels a little disheveled from the start of his relationship with the strange Brother Jack and his eccentric lover, Emma. Later, he reiterates his desire to please those around him: “My mind was desperately fighting for acceptance. Nothing would change that. They would move me and investigate and I, still believing, still bending to discipline, would have to accepttheir decision” (407). Invisible, as so many times in the past, he throws his preconceptions to the wind and allows himself to be overwhelmed by the expectations of others for the promise of a public forum with which to speak and perhaps obtain recognition. We are also able to sense the insecurity Invisible feels when he ponders whether brother Jack still wants him or not. He has given up on the idea of ​​servitude, but Invisible now believes he can forge an identity as a public speaker, even as he is promoting the ideas of a secret and devious society. While Invisible seeks to define himself through those around him, Oedipa's search for the truth requires the assistance of others, but is above all a personal exploration. Seek out Randolph Driblette after seeing The Courier's Tragedy to ask about the bones and their connection to Pierce's dealings with Cosa Nostra. Instead, Driblette is brusque and reserved, answering questions with questions. Driblette says: “You can piece together clues, develop one or more theses about why the characters reacted a certain way to the possibility of Trystero, why the assassins intervened, why the black costumes. You could waste your life this way and never touch the truth” (60). His quote coldly foreshadows the possibility that finding the truth may not be possible for Oedipa at all, but she persists because of the strange mention of the Trystero. The environment in which Oedipa must exist is chaotic in a very different way than that of Invisible. She must deal with characters with severe communication problems, living in a confused awareness in which she too struggles to define reality with the recurring symbol of Trystero. As the search deepens, the hunt Pierce sent her becomes more and more complicated. Oedipa wonders how far she must go to find the essential reality; she wonders whether "she too might be left with only memories compiled of clues, announcements, hints, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow every time be too bright for her memory to retain" (76). The fractured pieces of an undiscovered world are similar to the divergent opinions Invisible receives from his grandfather, the vet, and his brother Jack. However, many of the experiences Invisible encounters are authentic in their freshness, while Oedipa seems to surpass face value in a web of incorrigible clues that only grows more confusing. This realization is evident when he “looked down the corridor of Cohen's rooms in the rain and saw, for the first time, how far it would be possible to get lost in this” (76). Invisible begins to make new realizations as he more closely observes the intentions of those around him, while Pierce's intentions only serve to confuse Oedipa as she immerses herself in the mystery. Unfortunately, the reader does not learn of Oedipa's final vindication nor is there an insinuation of a great failure. The end of the novel is shrouded in a greater amount of mystery than its beginning, which is undesirable both for Oedipa and for the reader hoping for an all-encompassing ending. Oedipa, in fact, "lets her hair down". However, whether she or the reader is better off for her actions is debatable. She cannot communicate with the disordered society around her, nor can she communicate with Pierce, since Oedipa does not. believe that “the dead really persist” (79). His struggles continue endlessly, which calls into question whether or not it was right to leave San Narciso in the first place, and whether a central truth can be found when a society is disjointed and disintegrated. consumed by white noise. Only when Invisible begins to dig deeper and examine the intentions of those who request its services does it realize that society no longer has that innocence.