Essay Comparing The Man With The Twisted Lip

In Paul Auster’s City of Glass and Conan Doyle’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip” identity is challenged. For instance, Neville St. Clair disguised as the professional beggar Hugh Boone in Doyle’s text challenges the class distinctions by going between arguably two different class identities. Where as Quinn’s time spent was more enduring between different identities which challenged the notion of identity itself by suggesting that it is able to be altered and also dependent on interpretation. He uses identity more as an escape and people see him as he tells them he is. The challenge to class identity in Doyle’s text is only temporary, as St. Claire has returned to his identity position as a middle class man after being caught and guilty of his

“He regretted having been so abrupt with the caller. It might have been interesting, he thought, to have played along” (8) He thinks this simply because he is curious to who he is and what he is wanted for; something Quinn desires, is to be wanted. “He had been too busy with his job to think about himself” (142) He then loses himself in the job of being the detective after he claims he is Paul Auster. “Quinn could not be sure what he felt” (146) After investigating the case he is left in an essentially nothingness of what he had or was prior due to taking on the identity because he was so focused on his task he was needed for. He tried to be someone he was not and he lost his true identity from being so dependent on this “person” he was interpreting himself to be. “He walked up three flights to his apartment, he felt almost happy. But then he stepped into the apartment, and that was the end of that.” (147) His apartment and all his belongings were gone every piece of Daniel Quinn was now gone. No choice but to move on from all that was there his writing, the family memories there, and his life as Daniel Quinn. “He had come to the end of himself. He could feel it