New York City As Metaphor In Selected American Texts

‘New York City as Metaphor in Selected American Texts’ tries to capture the picture and meaning of an ever-changing city which has casted and still casts a spell over people all around the world. An uncountable number of authors have dedicated their works to New York City because of their fascination of its diversity and constant change that promises its dwellers a life in wealth and freedom. Surprisingly, all novels that have been analyzed reveal New York as the complete opposite of the American Dream that everyone expects when arriving on Ellis Island. The protagonists have to realize that their dreams will never become fulfilled and, consequently, become disillusioned and corrupted by their unhealthy environment. John Dos Passos describes a City that becomes a modern Babylon; it is fragmented and on its way to greed, capitalism and corruption. The New York of Stephen Crane’s Maggie Johnson and Edith Wharton’s Lily Bart is like a gigantic deterministic cage that denies every attempt of escape. Moreover, the metaphysical novel ‘City of Glass’ by Paul Auster does not show any sign of the promised life in wealth and freedom, but rather a city that is split into pieces, ruled by chance and misunderstandings. The city literally dehumanizes its inhabitants as they are dazzled by its addictive quality.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Wuppertal, language: English, abstract: "New York, Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There's nothing you can't do, Now you're in New York, these streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, lets hear it for New York, New York, New York" These lines from the song Empire State of Mind (2009) by the famous American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur Jay-Z, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, reveal the challenge of capturing the City of New York in words or text. New York City is on the one hand celebrated as the place "where dreams are made of," whose "streets will make you feel brand new" and whose "lights will inspire you," but on the other hand also as a "[c]oncrete jungle." The contrasting, yet at the same time very tempting ideas of the 'City that Never Sleeps' make it not only the most popular city in the United States, but also the most "dynamic, varied and perplexing in the world" (Gates ix). Robert A. Gates further describes the challenge for the writer, singer or song- writer: "There are no standards [one] can grasp; no guidelines [one] can follow," because [t]he City presents no standard language, philosophy, or neighborhood that can be labelled as typically New York" (ix). In order to understand the city and its influences at least to some extent, it might be useful to talk about the name 'New York' and the events in history that helped to make it the most important and most famous city in the world. When people talk about New York, the City of New York is referred to and more precisely the most densely populated borough of Manhattan. In 1898, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island were consolidated to the City of New York, which is part of the state of New York. Therefore, New York and New York City are almost always used synonymously and refer to the same part of the city:

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