Reading Response 10/27

Ghosts by Paul Auster  is a novel whose plot runs as a detective story. All the characters in this book are named after colors. The protagonist Blue, another detective is assigned by White to spy on a man named Black living in an apartment across the street Blue lives. Blue records all of his daily moves and every details about his action. After a while. Blue becomes bored of  writing notes about Black. As satisfied as he is with his paycheck, Blue still continues to write about him. Sometimes, Blue has to figure out what to include in his notes because Black did not do much. Auster reveals the quest for identity in this novel when he states, "To speculate from the Latin speculates meaning to spy out, to observe and linked to the word speculum, meaning mirror or looking glass for in spying out at Black across the street, it is as though Blue were looking into a mirror and instead of merely watching another he finds that he is merely watching himself"(20). Blue's problem is that all Black does is sit at a table and write/read. Months passed and Blue can no longer stand the fact that all Black does is write/read. He begins to engage in Black's life and learns that he too is a detective. I think the point Auster is trying to make is that when we are watching someone else, we are watching ourselves. This is true in fiction because while reading, we engage ourselves with characters that do not exist; a mirrored reflection of ourselves. The theme of mirrored identity and breaks down in communication trying to work into other people's life is what Blue experiences.
The meaning of the title of this novel Ghosts is made explicit on page 66 in which ghosts are both people in past and history and writers themselves. "Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense a writer has no life of his own even when he's there, he's not really there." All of us are surrounded by ghost and writing is the only medium one can attempt to communicate with one another. This novel deals with many of the questions about relationship between writer, character and reader. Blue realizes he is just putting himself in Black's life. In the end, he decides to get out of this dilemma  and be free to live his own life. This is a metaphor for search because he wants to experience things for himself rather than a character assigned to play a role. However, this mystery is compelling and while some of the twists are predictable, the ending is a bit surprising. Not knowing why White was Black and what he was doing to Blue made the ending interesting yet confusing. Despite the fact that Blue is writing about Black, Black is the controller of the situation . His actions dictate what Blue writes.