On, "Mapping the City" - NS

I felt as though the “Mapping the City” exercise was a novel and unique way to explore the setting of this book.  Often times a reader can get lost in the various places a novel may take him or her, but this exercise allowed me to visualize the journey of young David.   The exercise made me realize that although the “new world” of New York seemed large and frightful to David and his family, they really did not leave their neighborhood.  The push-pins showed that besides the entrance to the city and the visit to the Metropolitan Museum, David did not leave his original home in Brownsville and his neighborhood in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Rather, the push-pins had to essentially be placed upon each other to show the close physical proximity of the events in David’s narration.

A few push-pins specifically stand out to me and in turn reflect major points in the novel.  First, the pin at the Statue of Liberty reveals the entrance of the immigrant family into the city.  The detailed description of the Statue foreshadows the immigrant life ahead of the family.  Additionally, the image of the railway explosion posted by Maya does a great job of showing what the experience would have felt like to David.  It helps illuminate the experience in the eyes of a child.  The pins overall, however, show each other’s distance from one another.  They show the overlapping experiences of David’s large, but physically small, world.