Signified, Signifailed

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche asks the question “What is a word?” (766). Nietzsche argues that words are “illusions, metaphors, which have become worn by frequent use,” and his argument is explored in Paul Auster’s novel City of Glass (768). In this novel, Auster focuses on the failures of language to encapsulate the “thing-in-itself” (766). One of the characters, Peter Stillman, is obsessed with finding what he calls “God’s language,” which he believes is the language that describes a thing for what it really is. Much like Nietzsche, Stillman believes that “each word immediately becomes a concept,” and Stillman argues that the issue is the concepts do not reflect that which they are referring to. In the most basic form, the signifier does not signify the signified. Stillman uses the example of the umbrella, stating that when the word “umbrella” is uttered, the concept that arises is that which protects from the rain. But an umbrella with broken spokes and torn canvas is still called an “umbrella,” even though it no longer serves the function that the word conveys it should. Stillman argues that this simplistic example applies on a whole to everything: that we come to associate meaning with the word and not the thing itself, which reflects Nietzsche’s argument that we are “understanding…figures without mediation” (775).

Auster plays with the idea of words as metaphor – and inadequate ones at that – by repeating names throughout the novel. There are three Peters, two Daniels, and Auster even uses his own name. His main character, Daniel Quinn, constantly adopts other names, or “concepts” for himself, even while he, the “object” remains the same. Auster’s most complicated use of names comes in inserting his own name. There is an actual character named Paul Auster; Daniel Quinn’s character impersonates the character Paul Auster and takes to calling himself by that name; and at the end, a first person narrator is introduced who is decidedly not the author Auster or any of the other characters calling themselves Auster. The names of these characters are also used to convey a certain meaning, which generally falls into disarray. The name “Paul Auster” in the book is thought to be the name of a famous detective, but the name comes to describe a writer instead (although not the writing actually writing the novel), thus the concept behind the name cannot fit the reality (much like the umbrella situation). And by playing with the names of these characters, the author Auster explores the inadequacies of words to encompass the facets of a whole: “Auster” is used as the verbal concept for these 3 different figures, and yet none of them bear any relation to the other. Same signifier, different signifieds. Thus the concept falls apart and the name, in itself, fails to define but instead lends to confusion and mistaken identity.