“It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”
New York is an enigma, a rock star, a celebrity among all cities in the world. So much have been said and have been written about her. The city appeared in movies, in its own Broadway plays, and many songs have been sung for the great New York, but still it seems that the city is the most misunderstood city of all. New York is arguably the most famous or infamous city, depending on which perspective we are, in the whole world.
Two different stories, two different times, and one city is more than enough to inspire two individuals to write about the schizophrenia of New York. Schizophrenia, because New York is a city of different personality, different moods, and according to many, one can never be too familiar with New York. “Pregnant in New York” and “New York, 1936” are but two glimpses of the many different kinds of New York to many different people.
Ralph Ellison’s “New York, 1936” is an account of the city’s personality at the turn of the century and the author’s amazement and awe of his first few days in the great city of New York. The American writer Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, on Mar. 1, 1914. He achieved international fame with his first novel, Invisible Man in 1952. In 1936 he moved to New York City, where he met the novelist Richard Wright, and became associated with the Federal Writers’ Project, publishing short stories and articles in such magazines as New Challenge and New Masses.
Ellison hailing from the South saw racial discrimination as part of everyday life. Add to that the problems of Great Depression during the decade, whites called for blacks to be fired from their jobs as long as there where whites out of work. Because of this racial violence erupted especially in the South (American Memory Timeline). This prompted, among many other reasons for Ellison to move to New York. New York being a melting pot of races and ethnicities all around the world was a little more indifferent to cultural differences that black and white Americans can co-exist, albeit strangers.
Racial segregation was common in many parts of America during that time, that in extreme cases, public facilities and transportations often label people through skin color. But in New York, it was different, in fact according to Ellison, it was as if he was transported to the Eden of American culture for he was actually free to do whatever he likes (watching a theater which actually plays the struggle of the blacks in the South) and as to wherever he wants to go (riding a bus without being told to sit at the back, which was a common practice in the South) though he also said that his freedom is not absolute for he was personally restrained by himself unconsciously, that in escaping discrimination from the South, he brought it along to New York where he viewed the city dwellers through the overlay of his own Southern experience. Racial segregation was definitely a big niche in his childhood that New York could not erase easily.
Pregnant in New York by Anna Quindlen is a poignant story written in a humor-filled-with-sarcasm prose against male machismo in New York. The author, Anna Quindlen is a novelist, social critic, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Columnist. She is the author of Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue.
Pregnant in New York is a story not only focused on difficulties of pregnancy which is even made more difficult by being in New York, but it also tackles a wider issue, specifically being a woman along the streets of New York. Quindlen exposed New York as a place where most lives are anonymous and indifferent to each other. New York, according to her, has no pity and is always engage in a rat race. And in that race it’s a man to his own, and she being pregnant (herself and a half) seemed to be always a step behind.
Though in New York, one could actually do anything as he pleases, privacy is another issue. In fact, according to Quindlen” everyone is right up against everyone else and they all feel compelled to say what they think” that privacy is no longer an issue because there really is no privacy in the city. The author narrates her experience with the deli countermen where she gets unwarranted and rude comments just because she is pregnant. New York, famous for the yellow cabs are also infamous for not picking up pregnant women, because according to Quindlen they could be afraid or they don’t just like it when pregnant women delivers inside their cars. So most of the time, pregnant women have to take public transportation which are usually crowded and where women pregnant or not wont have to expect male gallantry by offering his seat.
The streets of New York are also famous for thugs and muggers, which in sarcasm the author felt that muggers in the city could take anything from anyone, even her baby, and that’s how dangerous the streets are especially to women who are generally pitied as defenseless. And a very typical New Yorker would alone in the street would look for a group not for social necessity but for protection, ignoring the fact that they are strangers to one another. And after the perceived danger is gone, they are back to being individuals indifferent with each other.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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