A Nag, Anagnorisis.

Anagnorisis is immediately followed by the consideration of possibilities, somewhat like the “zeroes and ones” (150) of a computer’s binary code. Then the moment of shock falls upon the unfortunate one, followed by a brief period of denial, and then panic. The Panic is responsible for the need to corroborate the possibilities and find the truth, and then it helps the person deal with the damage as immediately as possible. Depending on the degree of revelation, and the adrenaline that the ensuing panic stage produces, we see the person’s sweat turn cold.

In Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, he mocks anagnorises by actually demonstrating one. He satirizes his character, Oedipa Maas’s anagnorisis by describing every possibility for the reasons of her past experiences and their causes. Normally, when an author writes a revelation, he leaves it to the reader to be surprised and figure everything out for him/herself. It’s more fun that way. Pynchon, however, forces the surprise upon us, exaggerating what he believes other authors do without meaning to. Some authors’ revelations, he believes, are either unwitty or waste the situation at hand, exiled by their makers to the hells of bad literature.