ABSTRACT
Leviathan is a commentary on the ethos of late twentieth-century America, and the novel can be considered Paul Auster’s most overtly political work. Through the persona of Benjamin Sachs, Auster highlights the lack of spirituality evident within contemporary America, and emphasizes the need for institutional change. The forces of capitalism have consumed Auster’s America, and as a consequence, the notion of selfhood has been relegated to the status of a distant memory, which is associated with a distant and more enlightened era. In Leviathan, Auster focuses upon authorship and authority, and the debate between complacency and militancy. The revolutionary heritage of the early USA, once associated with the concepts of liberty and democracy, has been superseded by an unquestioning acceptance of apathy, corruption and materialism. Auster implies that while the contemporary American individual struggles to attach some sort of meaning to daily existence, his understanding of the lives of his American contemporaries fails at a communal, social and political level.
