Existential Angst in Paul Auster’s Leviathan (۱۹۹۲), The Book of Illusions (۲۰۰۲) and Oracle Night (۲۰۰۳)

Paul Auster, one of the most famous postmodern American writers, puts his emphasis on the human‘s cost of progress and the consequences of his actions in the present civilization. Auster suggests an optimistic attitude to life that, though the globalized village with all its modern amenities is degrading, the postmodern men should continue their efforts without losing hope and leading their lives in the condemned condition. Auster‘s characters represent the common men of the society suffering from a lot of external and internal conflicts. They must confront the existential angst in this materialistic world bereft of humanity and divine values. Hence, through an increased level of self-awareness and self- knowledge, Auster brings his characters face to face with harsh realities of life and offers solution to their sense of alienation, despair and existential angst. Auster helps them to find their place within the inexplicable and incoherent world.Hence, Paul Auster tries to give some comprehensible meaning to human condition, life, identity and above all, the self through his writings. One of the reasons for the worldwide publicity of Auster is his praises of American romantic writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Edgar Allen Poe in his novels. This is because the realization of the self was the crux of their concerns in their works. The most important theme in Auster‘s novels, deeply influenced by the existential philosophy and the Theatre of the Absurd, is the search for self and meaning in an absurd and chaotic world, something that is evidently visible in Auster‘s own life too. Indeed, many of Auster‘s characters reflect Auster‘s own life revolving around one‘s identity in the world and in the whole universe. For this reason, one can assume that Auster‘s fiction is the very medium through which he attempts to explain his own existence in the universe at large. It classifies what is personal and what is part of the other, which is the world at large. Through the medium of his writing, Auster has tried to investigate his state of being and his characters become the extensions of his own consciousness. Auster depicts postmodern world as an inexplicable and fragmented one in which his characters are caught in a mire of life‘s ever growing multi-dimensional complications. They are left alone to deal with the dilemma of life without any kind of help. In Auster‘s world, the basic social groups are deteriorated to the point that they no longer provide support, care, affection and grounds for personal growth and development. This leads into the alienation of his characters from the society and their fellow men. Alienating themselves from the social world۱and from the people, his characters fail to understand the purpose behind life and the significance of their existence in a hostile world. They are overwhelmed with a sense of void and the resultant angst.