Shattering The Mirror, Constructing The Self

Paul Auster (1947-), one of the most creative writers in contemporary America, presents in his works the reflection of identity crisis and self-identification in the postmodern society. The thesis takes The New York Trilogy composed of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room as the object of research. The three novels constitute a series, delineating the loss of humble characters in mid and late twentieth century New York society.The thesis adopts Jacques Lacan's theory of subjectivity, focusing on mirror stage, language, social relations, gaze, and desire, to explore the relationship among the subject, the Other and language. Chapter One analyzes the loss in City of Glass. According to Lacan, the subject depends on the Other to construct itself from three aspects, mirror stage, language and social relations, while the subject constructed in the process is the false self. Through identifying with four specular images, the protagonist Quinn cannot establish a real self. At the stage of social relations, Quinn loses the meaningful existence as a subject for lack of communication with the positive Other both emotionally and verbally. Chapter Two examines the gaze in Ghosts through three phases, the preexistence of a gaze, gaze of the Imaginary and gaze of the Real. During the mutual gaze between the hero Blue and his object of surveillance, Blue even watches himself from the point view of the other/Other and thus cannot recognize himself in the real sense. Blue also fails to acquire attention from the positive Other and loses the prerequisite of self-identification, but he has the courage to challenge the negative Other and tries to construct his real identity. Chapter Three discusses the construction of the self in The Locked Room. Through exposing the representation of desire in the novel, the chapter analyzes how the unnamed narrator transforms his position from the "slave" to the "master." The fate of the protagonist in this story is different from that in the previous two. The unnamed narrator ultimately finds his self because family generates in him a sense of belonging, and the presence of the positive Other facilitates his return to his self.The three novels not only relate to each other in content but represent the developing process of Auster's cognition on the issue of identity crisis and his attempt to find a solution for it. Though The New York Trilogy seems to be a literary interpretation of Lacan's theory on subjectivity, Auster is more optimistic than Lacan in believing that the subject can depend on the positive Other to realize self-identification.