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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page essay that examines two of the novels from Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy," City of Glass and Ghosts. The writer uses these novels to discuss the concept of the city and how it affects the construction of identity. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khnytcgg.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
theaters, museums, people from all walks of life, diverse in ethnic and racial origin. In short, cities contain the cumulative knowledge and achievement of the entirety of human history, as
well as also representing in its teeming populations, the history being made today. On the other hand, cities are also where the individual can become lost, anonymous, within the
press of humanity. Identity is, to a certain extent, a social construct, derived from where we live, who knows us, and the feedback that this entails. In the novels
that make up his "New York Trilogy," Paul Auster addresses this concept, as he explores it in these deeply psychological narratives, which examine the construct of identity in a modern
urban landscape. The first novel in the trilogy is City of Glass and its protagonist is a detective novelist named Daniel Quinn, who is still suffering from grief over
the deaths of his wife and child. His one pleasure in life is to walk. Each day he goes out walking on the streets of New York, which is
an "inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked...it always left him with the feeling of being lost" (Auster 4). These walks are comforting
to Quinn because they allow him to temporarily lose his identity. By walking, he could leave "himself behind," and simply give himself up to the movement, and, in the process,
"escape the obligation to think" (Auster 4). As this indicates, it is the anonymity of the city, the ability of the city to obliterate identity, that is so appealing
to Quinn. His "best" walks are when he felt that he was nowhere. "New York was the nowhere he had built around himself" (Auster 4). At one time,
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