Leviathan - Paul Auster (1992) - How the Dead Man is Depicted in this Extract?

Marion L.

Order the writing of a tailor-made Literature Text commentary

Free quote online

Text commentary Format .docx

Leviathan - Paul Auster (1992) - How the Dead Man is Depicted in this Extract?

Download

Read an extract

Themes

Licence LLCER, Leviathan, Paul Auster, roman, violence, symbol, narrator, identity, life, death

Reader
Abstract
Contents
Extract

Abstract

«Leviathan» by Paul Auster is a roman published in 1992. In this short extract, an unknown and unnamed narrator, after reading some news about a man who blew himself up on the side of a road, is about to tell this man's story. In this text's commentary, we are going to see in a more detailed way "How the Dead Man is depicted in this extract?".

Violence and Loneliness
1. The bomb, symbol of the Violence
2. Loneliness
3. Fourth of July
Shredded Identity
1. Manufactured Identity
2. The Car
3. Mutilated Body
The unknown Narrator
1. Time in a Hurry
2. The Unknown Narrator's motive
3. Life and Death

Get this table of contents for free after login.

Extract

[...] III - The unknown Narrator In the second part of this extract, the Unknown Narrator reveals himself (or herself?) to us. They take a more important place in this extract, and, as they appear clearly, the tone of the extract changed suddenly. A - Time in a Hurry In the first part, the time seemed to be frozen. There was little or no sign of the passing time, no mention of the date of death which is difficult to assess the days that are coming. [...]

[...] ] but it appears that he was sitting on the grass next to his parked car when the bomb he was building accidentally went off." B - Loneliness He was sitting by himself, in the grass, building a bomb and nobody was around. Nor that nobody knows who he was (or so we thought at the beginning of this extract). This man seemed to not belong anywhere. "As of today (July 1990), no one seems to have any idea who the dead man was." C - Fourth of July As said by the narrator, on the 4th of July, nobody seems to know who this man was. [...]

[...] Time froze, because he was no longer alive and there was no way it could continue what he was doing. But the Unknown narrator appears, in order to finish his work or, more likely to reveal the dead man's story. Because the unknown narrator is still alive, and they can pursued the dead man's goal (or not we don't know what are the Unknown narrator's motive), or at least restore the dead man's story and lost identity. [...]

[...] They know the dead man's identity, and they are about to play two roles: The Devil's Lawyer ( " It's not that I want to defend what he did, but since he's no longer in a position to defend himself, the least I can do is explain who he was and give the true story of how he happened to be on that road in northern Wisconsin.") and the Storyteller, who is about to tell this dead man's story. They have the keys to the dead man's mysterious identity and motive. The "why" and the "How". C - Life and Death In a certain way, it's like the dead man died. [...]

[...] II - Shredded Identity One of the most important pieces of this extract is the research of identity, of this dead man's identity. "The FBI, working along with the local police and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, began their investigation by looking into the car [ . A - Manufactured Identity This man had a stolen car, some stolen documents, some others were forged. What is normally very personal in general, is fake here. . ] but once they fed these documents into the computer, each one turned out to have been either forged or stolen." B - The Car The car, seven-year-old blue Dodge with Illinois license plates" is an important piece of this scenery, because the dead man was sitting along with this car, we didn't know anything of the place beside the road and this car, he did drive to this place with this car (or we assume at the first sight, this car did belong here. [...]

docx