New York City as Metaphor in Selected American Texts

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Wuppertal, language: English, abstract: 'New York, Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There's nothing you can't do, Now you're in New York, these streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, lets hear it for New York, New York, New York' These lines from the song Empire State of Mind (2009) by the famous American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur Jay-Z, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, reveal the challenge of capturing the City of New York in words or text. New York City is on the one hand celebrated as the place 'where dreams are made of', whose 'streets will make you feel brand new' and whose 'lights will inspire you', but on the other hand also as a '[c]oncrete jungle'. The contrasting, yet at the same time very tempting ideas of the 'City that Never Sleeps' make it not only the most popular city in the United States, but also the most 'dynamic, varied and perplexing in the world' (Gates ix). Robert A. Gates further describes the challenge for the writer, singer or song- writer: 'There are no standards [one] can grasp; no guidelines [one] can follow', because [t]he City presents no standard language, philosophy, or neighborhood that can be labelled as typically New York' (ix). In order to understand the city and its influences at least to some extent, it might be useful to talk about the name 'New York' and the events in history that helped to make it the most important and most famous city in the world. When people talk about New York, the City of New York is referred to and more precisely the most densely populated borough of Manhattan. In 1898, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island were consolidated to the City of New York, which is part of the state of New York. Therefore, New York and New York City are almost always used synonymously and refer to the same part of the city: Manhattan. It can be subdivided into Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. Westbound the Hudson River divides the city from New Jersey and East Manhattan is separated from Long Island by the East River. Other frequently used nicknames are 'The Big Apple', 'Gotham', 'Center of the Universe', 'The City that Never Sleeps' and 'The Capital of the World'.