earticle

영어

This study aims to investigate and deconstruct frontierism as one of American myths by analyzing Paul Auster’s Moon Palace. The paper begins with tracing down how Americans have regarded their land; for example, Crevecoeur, a French settler, thinks of America as the land of freedom though their writings also shows contradictory aspects of frontierism. Leo Marx delineates how early American settlers and writers consider America as a garden with machine in which both metaphors function to bring forth the myth of frontierism. Moon Palace, a rhapsody of chance and fate, delivers Macro’s exploration of his own genealogical origin as well as the truths of American dream and frontierism. Marco, an orphan, lose his uncle, Victor, and falls into a pit of melancholia refusing all activities for perseverance including consumption and communication. In his absolute destitute, he prefers not to do anything like Herman Melville’s Bartleby. After rescued by his friends at the central park where he lives as a homeless, Marco learns and unfolds the truth of his origin by working for his grandfather, Effing. With Solomon, his father, Marco also looks for the contradictory significance of the west going through tremendously unbelievable events. The paper reveals how this journey to find the meaning of frontierism ends with epiphany on ideological myth of frontierism and its effects in American mind.