“Boundary Situations” and Self-Transcendence: Elderly Narratives in Winter Journal

Abstract

This study focuses on the elderly narrative in Winter Journal by Paul Auster, integrating literary gerontology with the “Third Age—Fourth Age” theory to analyze how the author employs the second-person perspective to depict the multiple dimensions of aging, illness, and death. The paper first examines Auster’s recollection of his living environments and bodily perceptions, highlighting how his interwoven writing of personal memory and socio-historical context endows individual experience with both immediacy and public significance. Subsequently, through an analysis of textual details such as panic attacks and the loss of loved ones, this study elucidates the tension between the decline of bodily functions and the preservation of dignity, underscoring the individual’s persistent pursuit of life’s meaning within boundary situations. Finally, the research argues that Winter Journal not only provides an immersive narrative of elderly memory but also integrates existentialist reflection and sociocultural critique into the memoir tradition, offering multiple insights into how aging individuals resist the encroachments of time and death through narration. Auster’s examination of the “Third Age” and “Fourth Age” further reveals that, despite the dual challenges of physical and psychological deterioration, elderly individuals can still achieve a form of transcendence through language and recollection.