I believe that in Sunset Park, Auster is attempting to paint a picture of the housing crisis and the circumstances of the people it affected through the "dispossession" of his characters. He plays on the idea that all the inhabitants of Sunset Park are dispossessed and therefore, have no choice but to take over the abandoned house illegally.
However, I don't believe that Miles, Ellen, Alice, and Bing accurately depict dispossession. During the housing crisis, people were forced out of their homes and had absolutely no control over the matter. The inhabitants of Sunset Park however, seem to have dispossessed themselves. Miles' cutting off of his family, refusing to allow himself any material comforts, and forcing himself to do menial labor is due to his guilt. He is not forced to leave his home, his education, and his life behind, nobody evicts him. He does so because he is running from his problems rather than facing them. Even his leaving Pilar, something he feels he is being forced to do, being evicted from Florida, is completely voluntary. He could have chosen to have stolen for Angela or broken off his relationship with Pilar.
Bing is "dispossessed" because he wants to be. His dispossession is a form of rebellion and he flourishes in it. He could choose to get a good job and become a member of the community, however, he does not want to, he is content in being an illegal squatter. Ellen also has a steady job and an apartment at the beginning of the novel, which she gives up because she wants to join Bing's adventure. I believe Alice is the closest to actually being dispossessed since she has no money or home, however, she is highly educated and will, once she has gotten her degree, be eligible for a good job, that will guarantee her a home.
The actual dispossessed, the ones who truly suffer from the housing crisis are the people who's homes Miles takes pictures of at the beginning of the novel. They are the people who were truly dispossessed, forced from their homes, while the inhabitants of Sunset Park have dispossessed themselves.
I agree with Nina completely. Though Auster advertises the novel as a realistic view of how the recession forced many Americans into homelessness, the characters in his novel are not people who would actually be homeless if they really lived in this time period. They all had family, jobs, and money. Mostly minorities and the mentally ill were evicted from their homes and forced onto the streets, not white college graduates holding steady jobs.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a good approach for the deconstruction criticism. I think that this one would be the hardest to do, and that you picked an appropriate analysis. The point you make is one that is easy to pick up on, but hard to initially see.
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