America was once known as the land of opportunity. This was before wars and the advent of technology. For postmodern authors, modernity and prosperity have made America a disappointment. Barthelme's Snow White and Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 share similar ideas about the condition of American society. These two books address America's problems in typically postmodern terms. Through their female protagonists, these authors similarly use allusions to fairy tales and examinations of American society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Barthelme's Snow White borrows a theme from fairy tales but adds a post-modern perspective. The title of the book makes an obvious statement about the nature of Barthelme's narrative. This is a postmodern retelling of the story of Snow White. It abandons the traditional narrative form and instead aims to satirize American culture. In the traditional story of Snow White, the female protagonist flees a jealous stepmother and takes refuge with seven dwarves until her Prince Charming saves her. They ride off into the sunset together and live “happily ever after.” In Barthelme's book, Snow White is the unfortunate pseudo-wife of the seven dwarves. She is bored and frustrated with her situation. She doesn't like having sex with the seven men or doing their housework. Barthelme's use of fairy tales to describe his protagonist's situation is typically postmodern because it draws on intertextuality. It openly references a previous text and borrows heavily from it in order to comment on the text and create a new understanding of the previous text. Awareness of fairy tale texts is demonstrated when Snow White leaves her hair out the window in a Rapunzel-like style. gesture to convince her prince to save her. When she lets her hair down, she comments: "This motif, the long hair flowing from the high window, is I believe very ancient, it is found in many cultures, in various forms. » (86) She is aware of the implications of this. action. She realizes that she is not the first literary character to let herself go. This “pattern” has been done before and is “ancient… found in many cultures.” Barthelme alludes to the postmodern idea that all experiences have a textual basis. An authentic experience is no longer possible because we are always aware of what has already been done in the past. Snow White lets her hair down because that's what she thinks will attract her prince. However, she is aware that she is only an actor in the text of human experience. The allusion to Snow White is Barthelme's contribution to the postmodern evaluation of human experience. Barthelme uses fairy tales to contribute to post-modern literary dialogue and to comment on the current situation of women. By alluding to the fairy tale character of Snow White and giving her a modern context, Snow White becomes emblematic of the emotions that Barthelme attributes to the women of postwar America. Barthelme combines the tales of Snow White and Rapunzel to describe the life of a woman living with seven men in the sixties. By giving the archaic fairy tale character this modern context, the female protagonist then becomes a post-modern “damsel in distress.” She lets her hair down in an attempt to lure her prince to save her. On a page titled “Snow White’s Hesitations and Confusions,”Barthelme writes: “But who should I love? » Snow White asked hesitantly, because she already loved us, in a way, but that wasn't enough. Yet she was ashamed. » (18) It gives complexity and depth to the otherwise two-dimensional fairy tale character of Snow White. Here she is emotionally confused and upset by her situation. She likes dwarves "in a certain way", but longs to know more. She longs for something other than what she has with the dwarves because "it wasn't." She is different from the traditional Snow White of bedtime stories. She expresses her unhappiness openly and actively. Blanche -Snow experiences what Barthelme sees as the fate of most housewives at the time. Barthelme's "Woman on Horseback" and her many problems describe the modern American housewife who languishes in poverty. stagnation of household chores and lack of romance He treats this human condition with absurd treatment, as illustrated by Edward's diatribe on the woman on horseback: “The woman on horseback! The horsewoman! Without whom the whole structure of civil life would collapse! » (105) By exaggerating the term and its meaning, Barthelme both ridicules the iconography of the housewife and sympathizes with her plight. the idea according to which women are "the basis" and defender of the "structure of civil life". This is the idea that the success of a civilized society rests solely on the housewife in post-war America. No person or social institution could live up to this standard. However, such was the idealization of the housewife at the time. Barthelme demonstrates the absurdity of those who viewed women with such exaggerated expectations. The idealization of the housewife leads her to separate two aspects of her personality: that of the housewife and that of a housewife. be. She cannot reconcile these two roles. Edward concludes his speech about the horsewoman by describing how she feels after taking a bath and drying herself: What an endearing sight! It's quite a marvel... Do we have a being here who regards himself with the right amount of self-love? No. No, that's not the case... Rather, what we have here is a being who views herself, as a horsewoman, with something dangerously close to self-hatred. (106) This is the assessment of Snow White and, as a representative of the status of women, of the plight of women in the era of prosperity and modernity. She is not filled with "the right amount of self-love" but considers herself "self-hating." This is because she has been so idealized and iconized that she is no longer perceived as a sexual being. She doesn't enjoy his "naked wonder" because sex is not an exciting aspect of her life. There is a lack of romance in his life. In order to revive her love and sex life, she decides to let go and wait for her prince. When she lets go of her hair, she declares: “Now I recapitulate it, for the astonishment of the vulgar and the refreshment of my venereal life. (86) Snow White chooses to “recapitulate” the image of Rapunzel by letting her hair down for “the astonishment of the vulgar.” She chooses to act while waiting for her prince. She desires “a refreshment of venereal life” just like the women of the post-war suburbs. Not only does Barthelme sympathize with Snow White's situation; he also critically evaluates it. In a passage entitled “The Psychology of Snow White,” Barthelme writes: What does she hope? “One day my prince will come.” By this, Snow White means that she experiences her own being as incomplete, awaiting the arrival of the one who will “complete” her. In other words,she experiences her own being as “not-with”, even if she is in some way “with” seven men. (76) Snow White is every girl who has ever defined herself in terms of what or who she doesn't have. It is she who, according to Barthelme, is the problem for women at the time. They don't feel "complete" if they don't have their prince. Women are tied to this archaic notion of romance and chivalry and this leads to frustration and despair. Pynchon's female protagonist also experiences alienation and boredom with her destiny as a housewife. Oedipa Maas is the post-modern version of Pynchon's Ulysses. Like the character in the Greek epic, she embarks on a journey of discovery and knowledge. Similar to Barthelme's Snow White, Oedipa is representative of the female situation in post-war America. Pynchon makes this association very clear early in the book when he introduces Oedipa as coming home "from a Tupperware party whose hostess had perhaps put too much kirsch in the fondue." » (9) The immediate connotations of “Tupperware party” and “fondue” are unmistakable staples of the world of the suburban housewife. Pynchon associates Oedipa with this lifestyle to show that she is representative of all the women who were part of this world but is capable of more. Like Bartholomew, Pynchon also associates his main character with the fairy tale Rapunzel. When Oedipa reflects on her past with Pierce, Pynchon writes how she locked herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl, somehow, as if by magic, a prisoner among the pines and salt sprays of Kinneret, looking for someone to say hello, leaves it alone. your hair. When it turned out to be Pierce, she happily took out the pins and curlers. (20) Oedipa and Snow White both relate to the Rapunzel motif because they are both “pensive” and bored with their lives. They turn to the figure of the prince to redeem themselves from “their captivity among the pines and the salt fog.” Pynchon gives Rapunzel's allusion a deeper meaning than Barthelme because he continues this passage with Oedipus realizing that: "All that had passed between them had in reality never escaped the confinement of that tower.. .Pierce had taken her away from nothing there. » There was no escape... If the tower is everywhere and the deliverance knight has no evidence against its magic, what else? (21-22) Oedipa realizes that despite the fact that Pierce was her “prince,” he saved her from nothing. She realizes that there is "no escape" because the real demons that Oedipa and Snow White must face are not external forces but rather their own internalized perceptions of their world. In the world Pynchon describes, the tower "is everywhere" and the prince is "no evidence against its magic." Part of Oedipa's journey and what Snow White realizes is that one cannot take on the role of Rapunzel because there is no place to escape and there is no prince . The “tower” is their world, America, and there is no escape from the disappointment that America has become. Pynchon's Oedipa does not choose to wait for her prince as Snow White does, but rather takes an active role in exploring his destiny. She left for California “without any idea that she was moving toward something new.” »(23) Unlike Snow White, Oedipa ignores his character's link with a literary past. Oedipa has a new perspective, opposed to Snow White's conscious skepticism. Oedipa's reason for traveling to California is to carry out the will of a former lover, but this soon turns into a search for the.