Duality and Language in _City of Glass_

I’m focusing this post on page 39 of City of Glass:

At a glance the page consists of eight panels which are drawn differently than those on the preceding thirty-eight pages. The illustrations are comprised of thin straight lines giving them a harsh disconnected feel. This sense of disconnection is mirrored in the written content of the panels. The page depicts the way in which “language had been severed from God” (39.7). In panels 39.3 and 39.4 we see that by naming objects and “invent[ing] language” (39.3) the “thing and its name” became “interchangeable” (39.5). Panel 39.4 replaces Adam’s actual shadow with the word shadow, illustrating the continuity and interconnectedness of language and objects because “in that state of innocence, his words had revealed the essence of things” (39.4). This union of object and language is shattered in panel 39.6 when, as a result of “the Fall,” “names became detached from things.” Adam is seen on his own broken cliff, disconnected momentarily from the word he had created, and in panel 39.7 the word is the focus and is beginning to fall off the cliff, no Adam in sight. The final panel of the page depicts both Adam and the word “shadow” falling together, uniting “the Fall of Man” with the “Fall of language” (39.8).

Panel 39.2 is interesting not only because it is drawn differently from the other panels on the page (it is drawn to resemble a sketch of the serpent tempting Eve) but also because it takes up the space of two panels. The text of the panel describes how “[i]n Paradise Lost, each word has two meanings—one before the Fall, free of moral connotations, and one after, informed by a knowledge of evil” (39.2). This idea of doubleness in the text is reflected in the size of the panel, given that it is the only double-sized panel on the page. Also, it is an enlarged version of a section of the last panel on the preceding page, adding another level of duality through repetition. This idea of duality is one which follows through the entire novel. From Quinn’s multiple identities as himself, William Wilson, and Paul Auster to Peter Stillman Senior’s mysterious splitting in two at the train station, the idea of duality remains in the forefront.