As an adult, Oedipus meets a strange man on the road and kills him, never knowing that he is actually his father. ... The sex scene at the end of the chapter is full of Freudian sexual imagery, all of which is tied in with the events on the margins of the sexual act. ... In this chapter, the novel seems to take a deliberate turn toward the absurd. ... The most pristine image of this isolation comes early in chapter five, when Pynchon writes, "Oedipa sat, feeling as alone as she ever had, now the only woman, she saw, in a room full of drunken male homosexuals." ...

• Word Count: 2590
• Approx Pages: 10