“Let the great world spin,” a Colum McCann classic, delivers a snapshot into the lives of a multitude of radically different people to shed light on life’s tendency to teeter between grieving times and joyous times as a tightrope artist balances on a suspended wire. The analogy begins to take shape as the commencing pages describe a tight roper’s act high above the streets of New York. The crowd gathered are torn at the sight of what’s above their heads. They wonder if the figure atop of the towering building close to falling, willing to embrace death? Might he fall not on purpose? Is it madness or art? As time passed, the observers were able to figure out what was happening: “The watchers below pulled in their breath all at once. …show more content…
The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before.” The Spectators here are seen communally agreeing as they are shown breathing in one breath and depicted as viewing the spectacle as a word they had never before heard. They see the wire and the balancing pole the walker has in his hands. There is still fear, but then amazement and awe as the tightrope walker performs his act, including hopping and lying down on the wire. The author captures the mob psychology of the event with some in the crowd hoping to see a spectacular fall and tragic death and others hoping to see the magic of a seemingly impossible performance. Thus, McCann establishes his mission for the novel: the reader will experience both the grief and the joy that are part of life. As the novel moves on to its chapters, the reader begins with the life and story of John Andrew Corrigan and his family, told in the view point of his brother,