| Paul Auster occupies a relatively important position in American Literature; he is not only a novelist, but also essayist, translator and poet. The New York Trilogy composed of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room is chosen as the study object in this thesis. This trilogy mainly tells that the three protagonists of the three stories watch and follow others on the excuse of being detective. However, the protagonists all fall into a crisis of losing self after the disappearance of others. This trilogy inevitably arouses the reader’s interest in thinking about the relationship between self and other, and the loss and quest of self.The creative writing of this trilogy attracts the extensive attention both home and abroad, but the research of Auster is relatively late in mainland of China. The criticism and reviews on this trilogy concentrate on postmodernism, anti-detective narrative technique and subjectivity construction and other themes. This thesis chooses a new and different angle by embarking on the color description of the trilogy to explore the color features and the symbolic meanings of color composition in this trilogy. Through the analysis of colors, the author of this dissertation hopes it can provide some new perspective and ideas for the researches on Auster and his works.This thesis covers three parts. The introductory part is the first one which introduces Paul Auster, his The New York Trilogy and its literature review. The second part contains three chapters. Chapter one mainly argues the general color research,color in impressionist painting and literature, and Paul Auster’s color-usage in his writing. Chapter two analyzes the main features of color application in this trilogy:after a closing reading of the trilogy, two features will be observed: red takes the dominant role and cool colors are used largely. Chapter three majorly explores the symbolic meanings of the main colors in the trilogy: red associates with desire and danger, blue relates to solitude and depression, and black and white refer to nothingness and death. The final part makes a conclusion for the whole thesis,summarizing features of color composition and their related symbolic meanings in this trilogy and further uncovering the correlation between color and literature. |
