A Post-Structural Approach to Language Theory in Relation to Paul Auster’s City of Glass

Abstract: Do words mirror reality? This question has been at the core of several linguistic disputes for decades. Several scholars have investigated the relationship between the signifier and the signified, and different literary theories suggest different approaches. This study is a close reading analysis of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, a novel that has been the subject of several scholarly studies relating to the role of language. This study aims to analyse the role of signification in the novel seen from a post-structuralist perspective in order to show how Auster problematizes language. Several explicit remarks on language are made from various characters in the novel, each expressing and conveying different language views. Nevertheless, a post-structural view on language wins favour as post-structural ideas and concepts are seen in the narrative language and the constructive level of the text. The analysis shows that Auster uses a post-structural view on language to illustrate the instability of signification in language. Auster problematizes the stability of language in order to illustrate the tentativeness of truth and ambiguity of reality. The language view of the narrator is used to illustrate the mimetic view that language is able to accurately record reality. The mimetic view on language is problematized by using the notebook as a symbol for the relationship between the signifier and the signified. The arbitrariness of language is illustrated through the means of the notebook in order to problematize truth. Auster uses the character of the protagonist Daniel Quinn to illustrate the belief in an essential truth within literature. This view is then problematized by using arbitrariness in the structural level of the text in order to illustrate the relativity of truth. The character of Stillman Sr is used to illustrate the belief of man being able to control language. However, the search for a divine language turns out to be a gnostic and meaningless quest since no cosmic solutions are achieved. The failure of Stillman´s quest is used to argue for the predominance of language over man. Language determines how people perceive truth. The perception of truth and reality is dependent on language. Since language is arbitrary, there is no truth which consists outside of language.