On Indeterminacy In Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy

Postmodern literature is one of the most popular literary trends emerged in western society after World Warâ…¡, and indeterminacy is one of its fundamental characteristics. This thesis researches on the indeterminacy of identity and of language in The New York Trilogy, which is written by American author Paul Auster.Generally speaking, indeterminacy is the abandonment of binary opposition and the explanation and pursuit of meaning, and the search for multiple possibilities of the reality. In literature, indeterminacy shows in the obscure themes, ambiguous languages, open endings, and interchangeable characters. Indeterminacy in The New York Trilogy can be categorized into two aspects: indeterminacy of identity and that of language. The identity refers to both the characters and the narrators in the fiction. For the characters, the self encounters the other by chance, and loses his identity during the chasing. For the narrators, the author sets up obstacles deliberately so as to enlarge the possibilities of the stories. Indeterminacy of language involves intertextuality and language experiments and language games. This shows that language is the only thing that matters in postmodernism.From the analysis of two aspects on the indeterminacy in The New York Trilogy, we can see that the fiction shows a strong rebellion against the traditional literary values.