Changing Identities in Paul Auster's <i>Moon Palace</i>

Abstract

Advances in psychological knowledge have often been made in fiction long before psychological research made equivalent discoveries. Suffice it here to mention the Oedipus complex and the problem of narcissism, which were known in stories a couple of thousand years before the creation of the field of psychology. Paul Auster’s Moon Palace from 1989 deals with psychological material that was just beginning to be the focus of psychological studies in the early 90s, and that is still largely uninvestigated by professionals. As with almost all of Paul Auster’s work, the main concern of Moon Palace is identity. The novel tells the story of a few years in the life of Marco Stanly Fogg, when he passes from late adolescence into early adulthood and goes through an identity crisis. Marco’s story is then put in perspective by the stories of two other men, Effing and Solomon Barber that are told at quite great length. Taken together, these stories show that external events can lead to dramatic changes in a person, changes that concern the core of his or her being, namely the identity. The stories of these three generations of men show many identity changes, and the question the novel poses is why these occur. Are they results of internal changes in the characters themselves, or are they caused by external events, situations, or other people? In its turn, this treatment of identity change turns into a philosophical inquiry into the forces that guide our lives, where the fundamental terms are “control,” “fate” and “chance.” This article is part of my PhD project on Auster and identity development. My purpose with the article is to test my assumption that modern developmental psychology can help open up and explain important aspects of certain of Paul Auster’s novels. In the following I will analyze part of the development of Marco Fogg, who is the main character of Moon Palace.