On the Cosmopolitan Ideals in Let the Great World Spin

Abstract

In his novel Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann sets the main story in the New York City during the 1970s, using the image of a tightrope walker treading between the World Trade Center towers as the primary thread to relate the interconnected stories of people with different identities and intertwining experiences. This paper holds that McCann seeks to connect different groups to emphasize the importance of communication with the “other”, write about moral justice to convey his humanistic concern, and outline a blueprint of the cosmopolitan community in the context of global crises. In the end, McCann tries to break out of the constraints of the historical context and conveys positive emotions of universal significance with his cosmopolitan ideals embedded in literary imagination.