Manhattan Transfer Lesson Plan

As Jimmy wanders New York City, the narrator describes him as "stumbling big and vague, staggering like a pillar of smoke above the April streets" (381). Discuss the meaning of this description.

Throughout the novel, Jimmy has desired religious experience, and now that he has lost the last thing that he hoped in, Ellen, he is wandering around New York City in a haze. The description of him as "big and vague" seems to suggest that Jimmy has now embodied that which he has attempted to approach, i.e. God, or at least some psychological equivalent of God that can explain the problems of the world. This is reified by the description of him as a "pillar of smoke," a...