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Moon Palace - Final lesson

Hello everyone, 

It's with a lot of sadness that we announce the end of our chapter on Moon Palace. This week, we started by connecting Moon Palace with Bildungsroman. We were once again divided into 3 groups and had to analyse, thanks to articles, to what extent the novel was a Coming-of-Age story. The 1st article was called "A Picaresque Search for Father and for Self" and explained that Moon Palace contained the most important element of a bildungsroman which is the character's evolution. Marco evolves throughout the book, from a miserable and unlucky orphan to a man who thanks to his experiences gained maturity and is ready to start his life all over again. Moreover, Moon Palace contains a lot of dialogues, flashbacks and emotional transmission.The second article was in French and was called "Les Tribulations d'un Américain en Amérique". It explained how the time setting highlighted the characters' evolution and how Marco being an orphan and therefore going through a lot of trauma, was a trial. In addition, Marco has a double function. He might be the main protagonist but he's also the narrator. Finally, the last French article was  "Moon Palace ou les Errances du Bildungsroman". It underlined that Moon Palace was an educational novel focusing on Marco. There's something really interesting about Marco. He clearly isn't a typical hero. Indeed his actions and the way he doesn't change the course of his life are more anti-hero accurate.
Yes, Moon Palace is a Bildungsroman, but not a typical one. This could be explained by Paul Auster's admiration for Dickens novels. 

To conclude our chapter, Mrs Bowley shared with us other Moon Palace interpretations. We firstly watched a short film which its storyline was different from the actual plot. It had some similarities such as Marco being a literature lover, being a writer and the presence of the chinese restaurant "Moon Palace", but it had differences especially in the plot. In fact, Marco works there and has to write fortune cookies quotes. The second one was a modern theatrical adaptation, the third one was a film trailer called "The inner life of Martin Frost" which was directed by Auster himself, and the last one was a song by a Danish alternative band named after Marco's girlfriend, Kitty Wu. They were all very interesting but students expressed their preference in the short film. 

Thank you to all readers who took their time reading our articles. We sincerely hope they were helpful and fed your interest on Moon Palace. A genuine thanks to Mrs Bowley who gave us this opportunity, it really was an enriching experience. Thank you to Mrs Bowley who helped us gather all lessons and corrected the mistakes we've made in articles.

 

Comments

  1. Mrs BowleyFebruary 4, 2021 at 8:56 AM

    Thank you to Agathe and Armand for the wonderful job they did on this blog. It's been a real pleasure studying Moon Palace with your class. I will remember it as a special and unique moment in my (long) career. And I hope you, my students, will also remember it in the same way in the years to come. All the best and keep on reading Paul Auster's books!

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