”Let The Great World Spin” is a portrait of New York City. Spanning races and classes, it’s a tribute to the city’s diversity, rich and history. “The city lived in a sort of everyday present…. New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. ” This is what McCann tells us through is characters. And then later, “(The tightrope walker) had made himself a statue, but a perfect New York one, a temporary one, up in the air, high above the city. A statue that had no regard for the past. ” For that reason, Petit’s walk was a “stroke of genius. ” The cable of Philippe Petit links many different stories. The story have more than one narrator, different voices intertwine, let the reader see a rare “exchange”, see that ditch rather than through the parallel line, screwed to together.
McCann show that although New York is a diversification of modern metropolis, there is true love in this city. The amour between Corrigan and Adelita illustrate that love has infinite power that can conquer everything, including religious beliefs and moral constraints. Corrigan, who is a young Irish monk who has given his life over to doing what he tells his mother is “God’s work” to rescue the world from poverty and injustice. He has a self-styled liberation-theology model is that ”Christ never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have rejected mystery and in that, rejecting faith. ”
After Fang 2 he leaves Ireland, he struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the Bronx. Corrigan is a monk sworn to celibacy, but everything changed after he meets Adelita, who is the grand passion of his brief life. After his first sex with her, he feels ravel due to the contradiction between his beliefs to the god and his love of Adelita. With every touch or kiss that Corrigan and Adelita shared, Corrigan meets with a feeling of guilt and joy all at the same time. He needs to make a intractable choices between God and Adelita, so he leaves Mantauk ”to find God”, he is afraid of losing his connection to his God, however, at the same time he can’t stop thinking Adelita, he can’t stop her touch, her face, her neck… Although he never abandon the God, he really cares about Adelita, he can not give up her. He is bound by his religion yet he can not deny himself the love that he feeling for Adelita. He can never balance his beliefs in God and his love to Adelita. His beliefs can never makes he forget Adelita, he can’t change back to the way he Used to be, he is not a devout Christian anymore.
So we can see that love has no boundary line. The relationship between Lara and Ciaran show that love can help someone find Themselves. When Lara and Ciaran make their way to the bar after Jazzlyn’s funeral there seems to be a spark between the two and they get to talking about John. “… he made people become what they didn’t think they could become. ” This really inspires me especially as a young adult because as humans grow and mature everyone is trying to find out who they are and where they belong. “There is, I think, a fear of Fang 3 love. There is a fear of love. This quote hits home with Lara because Blaine is all she knew for a long time and thenCiaran became a huge part of her life. From the tragic day Corrigan was killed in the car wreck until the day Lara dies Ciaran will be part of her life because Lara can never let go of the guilt she carries. Lara is acting like a woman in love when she is with Ciaran and when she leaves the bar. Lara turned and looked back and Ciaran when she was outside which is what someone does when they are drawn to another person or long to be with them. Lara is scared of her feelings for
Ciaran. She is married, had a part in John’s death, just met Ciaran a few hours ago, and now she is falling for Ciaran? That would be frightening for any human being. However, she never stop trying to find who she is, the feeling of Ciaran makes the desire of finding herself more powerful. So we can see that true love can help people to finding themselves, to know who you are and what you really want. But the novel isn’t just about the interconnectedness of people; it’s about connecting with a moment, a memory, an image. As the broke-down hooker Tillie astes away in jail, she remembers a week spent at an expensive hotel with a trick who only wanted to talk with her, respected her, practically loved her. She relies on that memory to help her navigate the vicious downward spiral of her life. Although this city is complicated, people in New York is not as simple as people in the countryside or small city, however, there is also true love in this city, this kind of love can make people find themselves and beat everything.
Reference
- Macann, Colum. Let The Great World Spin: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.
