America was known as the land of opportunity. This was before wars and the advent of technology. For postmodern authors, modernity and prosperity have turned America into a disappointment. Barthelme's Snow White and Pynchon's The Cry of Lot 49 share similar ideas about the condition of American society. These two books discuss America's problems in typically postmodern terms. Through their female protagonists, these authors use fairy tale allusions and analyzes of American society in similar ways. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Barthelme's Snow White borrows a theme from fairy tales but adds a postmodern perspective. The title of the book makes an obvious statement about the nature of Barthelme's fiction. It is a postmodern retelling of the Snow White story. It abandons the traditional narrative form and instead aims to satirize American culture. In the traditional story of Snow White, the female protagonist runs away from a jealous stepmother and takes refuge with seven dwarfs until her Prince Charming rescues 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 dwarfs. She is overwhelmed by boredom and frustrated with her situation. She doesn't like having sex with the seven men or doing housework. Barthelme's use of fairy tales to describe his protagonist's situation is uniquely postmodern because it employs intertextuality. It blatantly refers to an earlier text and borrows heavily from it to comment on the text and create a new understanding of the earlier text. Awareness of fairy tale texts is demonstrated when Snow White leaves her hair out the window in a Rapunzel-like expression. gesture to convince her prince to save her. When she lets her hair down she comments: "This motif, the long hair coming down from the high window, I think is very ancient, present in many cultures, in various forms."(86) She is aware of the implications of this. action. He realizes that he is not the first literary character to let himself go. This "motif" has been done before and is "ancient...present in many cultures." Barthelme alludes to the postmodern idea that all experiences have a textual basis. Authentic experience is no longer possible because one is 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, he is aware that he is simply 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 postmodern literary dialogue and to comment on the current situation of women. By alluding to the fairytale character of Snow White and giving her a modern context, Snow White becomes an emblem of the emotions that Barthelme attributes to women in post-war America. Barthelme combines the fairy tales of Snow White and Rapunzel to describe the life of a woman living with seven men in the 1960s. By giving the archaic fairytale character this modern context, the female protagonist becomes a postmodern "damsel in distress." She lets her hair down in an attempt to lure her prince out to save her. On a page titled "Snow White Vaccinations and Confusions" Barthelme writes: "'But who am I to love?' Snow White asked hesitantly, because she already loved us, in a way, but it wasn't enough. Yet she was ashamed."(18) It gives complexity and depth to the otherwise two-dimensional fairytale character ofSnow White. Here she is emotionally confused and upset by her situation. He loves dwarves "in a way", but wants more. He longs for something different than what he has with the dwarves because "it wasn't enough." She is different from the traditional Snow White of bedtime stories. She is vocal and active about her unhappiness. Snow White experiences what Barthelme sees as the plight of most housewives at the time. Barthelme's "Wife" and her many problems depict the modern American housewife languishing in the stagnation of housework and a lack of romance. He gives this human condition absurd treatment, as illustrated in Edward's diatribe on the horsewoman: "The horsewoman! The very basis of the American plethora! The horsewoman! Without whom the whole structure of civilized life would collapse!" (105) By exaggerating the term and its meaning, Barthelme ridicules the iconography of the housewife and sympathizes with her plight. He criticizes the idea that women are the "basebone" and supporter of the "structure of civilized life." It is the idea that the success of a civilized society depends solely on the housewife in postwar America. No person or social institution could live up to that standard. However, this was the idealization of the housewife of 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 the. her personality: that of the housewife and that of the sexual. Edward concludes his speech on the Amazon by describing how she feels after bathing and drying herself: What a captivating sight! .. Do we have here a being who regards himself with the right amount of self-love? No. No, we don't... Rather, we have here a being who regards himself, as an Amazon, with something dangerously similar to 'self-hatred. (106)Here is the evaluation of the condition of Snow White and, as a representative of the female condition, of women in the era of prosperity and modernity. She is not filled with the "right amount of self-love", but regards herself with "self-hatred". This is because she has been so idealized and iconolized that she is no longer perceived as a sexual being. He doesn't appreciate his "naked wonder" because sex is not an exciting aspect of his life. There is a dearth of romance in his life. To spice up her romantic and sexual life, she decides to let her hair down and wait for her prince. When she lets her hair down she declares: "Now I'll recapitulate it, for the amazement of the vulgar and the refreshment of my venereal life." (86) Snow White chooses to "recapitulate" Rapunzel's image by letting her hair down to "the amazement of the vulgar." She chooses to act while waiting for her prince. She longs for "refreshment of venereal life" just like the women of the post-war suburbs. Barthelme not only empathizes with Snow White's situation; he also evaluates it critically. In a passage entitled "The Psychology of Snow White" Barthelme writes What does he hope for? "One day my prince will come." With this, Snow White means that she experiences her being as incomplete, awaiting the arrival of those who will "complete" her. That is, he lives his own being as 'not-with' even if in a certain sense he is 'with' seven men. (76) Snow White is every girl who has always defined herself in terms of what or who she doesn't have. She is what Barthelme perceives to be the problem with 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 that leads to frustration and desperation. Pynchon's female protagonist also experiences alienation and boredomwith her destiny as a housewife. Oedipa Maas is the postmodern version of Pynchon's Ulysses. Like the character in the Greek epic, he embarks on a journey of discovery and knowledge. Similar to Barthelme's Snow White, Oedipa is representative of the situation of women in post-war America. Pynchon makes this association very clear early in the book when he presents Oedipa as returning 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 suburban housewives. Pynchon associates Oedipa with that lifestyle to show that she is representative of all the women who were part of that world but that she is capable of doing more. Like Barthleme, Pynchon also associates his main character with the tale of Rapunzel. When Oedipa reflects on her past with Pierce, Pynchon writes of how she had trapped herself in Rapunzel's curious role of a thoughtful girl somehow, magically, captive among the pines and salt mists of Kinneret, searching for someone to tell her hey , disappointed. your hair. When it turned out to be Pierce, she had happily pulled out hairpins and curlers. (20)Oedipa and Snow White both connect to Rapunzel's motif because they are both "pensive" and bored with their lives. They look to the figure of the prince for redemption from being "prisoner among the pines and salt mists". Pynchon gives the allusion to Rapunzel a deeper meaning than Barthelme because he continues this passage with Oedipa realizing that: All that had happened between them had never truly escaped the confinement of that tower...Pierce had taken her away from nowhere , there had been no escape... If the tower is everywhere and the liberation knight has no evidence against his magic, what else? (21-22)Oedipa realizes that even though Pierce was her "prince", he didn't save her from anything. She realizes that "there is no escape" because the real demons that both Oedipa and Snow White must deal with are not external forces but are instead their own internalized perceptions of their world. In the world described by Pynchon, the tower "is everywhere" and the prince is "no evidence against his magic". Part of Oedipa's journey and what Snow White realizes is that she cannot take on the role of Rapunzel because there is nowhere to run 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 instead takes an active role in exploring her destiny. She leaves for California "without having the slightest idea that she was moving towards something new."(23) Unlike Snow White, Oedipa is not aware of her character's connection to a literary past. Oedipa possesses a new perspective in contrast to Snow White's knowing skepticism. Oedipa's reason for going to California is to carry out the will of a former lover, but it soon turns into a search for the truth. He is seeking the truth about the Trystero, a mysterious underground mail system, but also the universal truth. At certain points in this journey towards knowledge she doubts whether it is possible to find answers. This doubt is expressed when "Oedipa wondered whether, in the end, she too would only be left with collected memories of clues, announcements, hints, but never the central truth itself, which somehow must be too bright for her memory every time." ". hold."(95) His goal is to find the "central truth itself," for without reaching it his journey is in vain. He feels that if he can discover the truth about the Trystero it will lead to a better understanding of America and the world in where you are forever stuck in a tower.