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Symbols
Beyond literally representing the shadowy Tristero organization, the muted post horn symbol also represents the impossibility of objective interpretation—an idea that’s embodied by Oedipa Maas’s uncertain, confusing investigation into Tristero. Just like the reader, Oedipa Maas spends much of the novel struggling with the very process of interpretation. Eventually, she learns that the Tristero symbol is a muted version of the post horn from the Thurn and Taxis emblem, representing Tristero’s origins in a rebellious offshoot of Thurn and Taxis. But during most of the book, Oedipa is convinced that the symbol is meaningful despite having no evidence about what it means or where it comes from. In other words, while the horn symbol is still just one among many suspicious images that could be taken as meaningful clues, Oedipa actively picks it out and gives it the importance that it later takes on.
Later, when Oedipa spends a night in San Francisco, the symbol suddenly surrounds her. She sees it on the Inamorati Anonymous man’s lapel pin, in a laundromat’s window, and in several other places that could not all possibly be part of Tristero’s mail conspiracy. By emphasizing Oedipa’s struggle to identify the horn symbol’s meaning, Pynchon explicitly shows her struggle to form a coherent explanation of the Tristero phenomenon as a whole. Of course, at this point in the novel, the reader is likely to be having the same problem: Pynchon’s ambiguous clues make it nearly impossible to separate the meaningful signal from the distracting noise. Everything can mean something, something else, or nothing at all—while the post horn symbol could mean Tristero, it could also mean that Inamorati Anonymous has a wide membership in San Francisco, or its appearance could just be a coincidence. The horn thus represents the idea that interpretation is always subjective and that explanations are always in the eye of the beholder.
The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3 Quotes
He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew
Now recks no lord but the stiletto’s Thorn,
And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn.
No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,
Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero.
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These cryptic lines from The Courier’s Tragedy are Oedipa’s first and—until the final chapter—only taste of the mysterious Tristero (or Trystero). In the play’s fourth act, masked, black-clad assassins kill Niccolò, the heir to the Dukedom of Faggio, who is disguised as a courier for the monopolistic Thurn and Taxis company and in the process of carrying a secret letter from the evil Duke of Squamuglia, Angelo. When he finds Niccolò’s body, Gennaro—the interim ruler of Faggio, who is played by the production’s director, Randolph Driblette—speaks these lines. Oedipa’s mental alarm bells go off: she realizes that “Trystero” must somehow Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum volup
Chapter 4 Quotes
Under the symbols she’d copied off the latrine wall of The Scope into her memo book, she wrote Shall I project a world?
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Besides later derailing her conversation with the paranoid engineer Stanley Koteks, this brief note in Oedipa’s journal actually speaks volumes about the necessity and fragility of all interpretation (or ways of “projecting a world”). Oedipa borrows the idea of projection from Randolph Driblette, the director of The Courier’s Tragedy, who compares his control over the play to a projector casting an image of the universe onto the inside dome of a planetarium. Notably, while the universe is real, any perspective on it is only a reconstruction: nobody can ever see the universe in the same form as the projector depicts Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex con
“Then the watermark you found,” she said, “is nearly the same thing, except for the extra little doojigger sort of coming out of the bell.”
“It sounds ridiculous,” Cohen said, “but my guess is it's a mute.”
She nodded. The black costumes, the silence, the secrecy. Whoever they were their aim was to mute the Thurn and Taxis post horn.
[…]
“Why put in a deliberate mistake?” he asked, ignoring—if he saw it—the look on her face. “I've come up so far with eight in all. Each one has an error like this, laboriously worked into the design, like a taunt. There's even a transposition—U. S. Potsage, of all things.”
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When Oedipa visits the eminent stamp expert Genghis Cohen, she finally gets some empirical evidence for the conspiracy he has long suspected: the Tristero organization, the W.A.S.T.E. mail system, and the mysterious muted horn symbol are all connected. The muted horn’s meaning is clear: Thurn and Taxis, Europe’s dominant mail monopoly, had a post horn as its emblem, so Tristero, which dedicated itself to destroying Thurn and Taxis, chose a muted (or silenced) version of the same symbol. Cohen also points out Tristero’s stamp forgeries, which are curious because they are more elaborate than the original stamps. Like a secret Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi so
Chapter 6 Quotes
It may have been some vision of the continent-wide power structure Hinckart could have taken over, now momentarily weakened and tottering, that inspired Tristero to set up his own system. He seems to have been highly unstable, apt at any time to appear at a public function and begin a speech. His constant theme, disinheritance. The postal monopoly belonged to Ohain by right of conquest, and Ohain belonged to Tristero by right of blood. He styled himself El Desheredado, The Disinherited, and fashioned a livery of black for his followers, black to symbolize the only thing that truly belonged to them in their exile: the night. Soon he had added to his iconography the muted post horn and a dead badger with its four feet in the air (some said that the name Taxis came from the Italian tasso, badger, referring to hats of badger fur the early Bergamascan couriers wore). He began a sub rosa campaign of obstruction, terror and depredation along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes.
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When Oedipa visits the eccentric English professor Emory Bortz, she finally finds historical facts to support her wild conspiracy theories about Tristero. From the memoirs of one Dr. Diocletian Blobb, Oedipa pieces together a story about Tristero’s formation in the 1500s, when Hernando Joaquín de Tristero y Calavera sought to seize the Thurn and Taxis monopoly from Jan Hinckart. Although it is unclear whether Tristero y Calavera was actually disinherited or just saw an opportunity to seize power, his claim to the “right of blood” and vow to wage war on Thurn and Taxis explain the stories of shadowy, black-clad Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas
Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream […] Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you […] all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.
Those, now that she was looking at them, she saw to be the alternatives. Those symmetrical four. She didn’t like any of them, but hoped she was mentally ill; that that’s all it was. That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.
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Despite finally learning about the alleged historical origins of the mysterious Tristero mail-carrying conspiracy, Oedipa still cannot rest easy at the end of The Crying of Lot 49. In fact, she grows even more anxious and distraught when she learns that Pierce Inverarity owned every channel that has given her information about Tristero, from Zapf’s Used Books to the theater where she saw The Courier’s Tragedy to the college where Emory Bortz teaches English. Named for the mythical Narcissus, San Narciso now seems to represent Pierce Inverarity building the world in his own image so that he could stick around Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate et. Voluptas suscipit alias. In et eveniet.
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The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol Symbol Timeline in The Crying of Lot 49
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol appears in The Crying of Lot 49. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...but asks interested parties to contact the writer, Kirby, through “WASTE.” It includes a strange symbol that looks like a muted trumpet.
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Chapter 4
...off the employees, a very young man named Stanley Koteks, is drawing the same trumpet-like symbol that she saw in the message from Kirby on the bathroom wall at The Scope....
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...down Nefastis’s address, Oedipa opens her journal to a page where she has drawn the hornlike symbol from The Scope and written, “Shall I project a world?” Stanley Koteks suddenly grows...
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...that his grandfather cut off of one of these people’s fingers: it has the W.A.S.T.E. horn symbol on it.
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...might have hired them to reinforce its monopoly. He also knows nothing about the W.A.S.T.E. horn symbol.
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...he finds peculiar about one of the stamps: its is printed with the mysterious W.A.S.T.E. symbol as a watermark. Another stamp, from Germany, says “Thurn und Taxis.” Cohen explains that Thurn...
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Chapter 5
...a drink, chatting with a man who is wearing a lapel pin of the Trystero horn symbol. She asks him about Thurn and Taxis and the U.S. Mail service, but he...
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...off. He saw that the stamps on the gasoline-doused letters in his pocket showed the horn watermark, and he decided that this was a sign that he had to give up...
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...the bar and spends the evening searching San Francisco for any sign of the Trystero horn symbol. She sees one on the sidewalk but notices a man in a suit staring...
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...that dreaming and being awake are the same thing. Oedipa asks them about the Trystero symbol, and they explain that they jump rope in the different parts of the symbol while...
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...her and Jesús together. She notices an old anarchist newspaper from 1904 with the post horn symbol on it, and Jesús comments that this paper has somehow made it to him...
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Oedipa she sees a group of hoodlums with the horn symbol stitched into their jackets at the beach. She sees it scratched into the back...
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...of clues and the popularity of W.A.S.T.E. Downtown, she sees an elderly sailor with the symbol tattooed on his hand crying inside a building. She approaches him, and he gives her...
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...her therapist Dr. Hilarius on the way. Although she has seen clear evidence that the horn and W.A.S.T.E. are all over the Bay Area, she hopes that Hilarius will convince her...
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Chapter 6
...Oedipa and asks her to visit. He shows her an old stamp with the muted horn symbol that reveals the true meaning of W.A.S.T.E.: “We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire.” This stamp...
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