Colum Mccann's Let The Great World Spin

1311 Words3 Pages

Colum McCann, author of, Let The Great World Spin, researched the streets of New York in the 70’s to create the perfect landscape while he remained in Dublin, Ireland. Dedicating numerous hours into the novel McCann incorporates literary devices like symbolism to depict a larger story. Within the novel McCann symbolises different objects to portray each character in their own individual light and to illustrate the meaning of love. Symbolism helps to show that the death of objects and people spark love between the living. Throughout the novel, McCann illustrates destruction of the dead and the effects on the living by symbolizing different objects. Lara and Blaine, a mistake of a marriage, caused chaos and wreckage among family members and …show more content…

Jaslyn and Pino spark a love connection fairly early but when Pino was asked if he was carrying liquids at the airport he responded, “Eight pints of blood. I don’t think they’ll spill” (McCann 326). After later clarifying the blood was a joke, the eight pints of blood became more than a joke to the reader. McCann uses the eight pints of blood to symbolize the blood contained in the average human body. The connection between the blood is related to the death of Jazzlyn. Jazzlyn who was also struck dead by Lara and Blaine’s car created a different type of chaos. Chaos because Jazzlyn’s two children were left abandoned without a mother, father, or grandmother. The love was shattered just like the windshield. Therefore, when the eight pints of blood was used as a joke it symbolized the death of Jazzlyn because as Lara described it, “... the body of the young girl… express[ed] herself in a patch of blooming blood” (McCann 117). The blooming blood surrounding Jazzlyn is symbolic to the eight pints of human blood noted by Pino. Overall, the eight pints of blood connected Pino and Jaslyn into a far deeper

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Colum Mccann's Let The Great World Spin

When The Legends Die by Hal Borland

Whirligig by Paul Fleischman