The Crying of Lot 49 (Ch. 1) by Thomas Pynchon

The first thing that stuck out to me when I started reading The Crying of Lot 49 was the name of the the protagonist: Oedipa Maas. I was reminded (as I presume I ought to have been) of the Greek tragedy of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. I've only read one chapter so far, so I'm not yet exactly sure why Pynchon decided to link his protagonist to this classical tragic hero, but I do believe that Oedipa will turn out to be a tragic character. She seems to have a negative outlook on things. When she thinks back to her relationship with Pierce, she imagines that she was like Rapunzel trapped in a tower, and when Pierce attempted to rescue her by climbing her hair, that it was only a wig and he fell. This leads me to believe that she places a lot of blame on herself for things. She is pessimistic about her influence on the lives of the people around her.