Nomadism in a Becoming-Labyrinth in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

Abstract

Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 constructs a wholly new “Becoming-Labyrinth” narrative via the tangled underground postal system known as Tristero. Unlike the linear structure of a traditional labyrinth, in which a hero is guided to a central truth, Pynchon’s Becoming-Labyrinth thrives on rupture, drift, and uncertainty. The protagonist Oedipa Maas continually wanders nomadically through fragmented clues and decentered spaces, embodying the modern individual’s existential plight adrift between discourses of power and illusions of truth. Grounded in Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of rhizomes, deterritorialization, nomadism, and becoming, this paper examines how Oedipa navigates an ever-expanding network of meaning within the Becoming-Labyrinth, revealing how Pynchon’s rhizomatic writing resists the grand narratives and rationalist centers of modernity. In the end, the novel denies any possibility of reaching a final truth and instead points toward an endless process of meaning-generation, thereby constructing a pluralistic, open, and politically resistant postmodern aesthetic paradigm.