After reading the first four chapters of The Crying of Lot 49, I find myself most drawn to Oedipa’s fascination with the play and how certain elements of the story, including names and events, seem to correlate to things happening in Oedipa’s own life. Three men dressed in black, for example, attacked a dozen Wells, Fargo men, similar to the three assassins featured in The Courier’s Tragedy. During a conversation with the director of the play, however, he states that the play exists not in a physical form but within the minds of those who have experienced the narrative (62). This doesn’t seem to be entirely the case, as certain elements from the story bleed out into the real world, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Oedipa’s personal reaction further complicates the matter, stating that she occasionally feels “the absence of an intensity, as if watching a movie, jut perceptibly out of focus, that the projectionist refused to fix” (10). It’s interesting to consider how the tension between Oedipa’s fictional reality and the reality of the play impact her character, and whether a state of self-awareness is an appropriate term to describe her character’s ability to recognize the uncanny nature of reality within The Crying of Lot 49.