Foil

Character Role Analysis

Pierce Inverarity / Randolph Driblette

Pierce is the character suspected of masterminding and directing the entire Tristero conspiracy/hoax. But while Pierce is merely suspected of being a weird hoax-director, Driblette actually is one. In his play, The Courier's Tragedy, Oedipa sees all sorts of clues that Driblette knows much more about the Tristero than he is letting on.

It's as if both the play and Inverarity's estate have been specially designed to get Oedipa to chase the notion of the Tristero… without ever revealing what it actually is or if it exists. The third foil we have to add here is Pynchon himself, whose book walks a high-wire act between brilliant satire and absolute practical joke.