Volunteers, Priests and Community Work in Overpopulated New York City. (Literary Representations of Pre- and Post- 9/11 NYC)
Journal Title: Dialogo - Year 2018, Vol 4, Issue 2
Abstract
Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin (2009), considered a New York, Irish- American, immigrant, 1970s and post 9/11 novel, starts with Philippe Petit’s walk on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers in New York in 1974. This historical event is used as a symbol which links space (Park Avenue and the Bronx at the extremes), time (1974 and 2006, the post 9/11 period) and characters’ stories. An overpopulated city in permanent change, New York is constructed in the novel vertically, horizontally as networks. The article will explore the relation between the real and fictional spaces of New York in its three dimensions, or as “thirdspace”, superimposing pre- and post- 9/11 cartographies. The most relvant dimension of the overcrowded city, the horizontal connection, is achieved through the hard work and dedication of an Irish Jesuite priest (in 1974) and two community volunteers (in 2006), each of them part of dedicated networks.
Authors and Affiliations
Nicoleta Stanca
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP356856
- DOI 10.18638/dialogo.2018.4.2.16
- Views 150
- Downloads 0
Reflection on the basic presuppositions of a democratic renewal in the Muslim world in a context of globalization
“To braid a mat with sand as raw material or to make sand with a mat” is the enigma that the young people of a village should solve in 24 hours, on pain of suffering the wrath of a genius. In fact, according to a Yacouba...
Functional Illiteracy: An Epistemic Quest in Modern and Biblical Times
Functional illiteracy has become in the last decades the technical term used to describe a reality in which a literate person fails to grasp the meaning of a text or to perform a basic analysis necessary for an effective...
Some of the bases of the perception of the meaning between the Arab Islamic heritage and the modern semantic theory
The research compares our Arabic linguistic heritage with the modern semantic theory today on three major issues: 1) the issue of meaning structure, is it a composite entity composed of elements or a simple entity; and 2...
Intellectual capital solution to performance in economics condition : Descriptive study from Indonesia as a religious State
This paper aims to explain and review about intellectual capital in improving the economic conditions of a nation and state in Indonesia. In explaining and reviewing this capital, intellectual capital, using descriptive...
Overpopulation between Divine Providence and Human Anguish
Overpopulation has become a priority theme on contemporary man’s agenda, raising concern, fear and anxiety at the level of the religiously indifferent, atheist or agnostic man. From an Orthodox Christian perspective, thi...