New York City

New York City is the home of Zone One, an area of lower Manhattan barricaded by border walls, and is a vital setting in the novel. The first lines of the novel are, “I always wanted to live in New York,” a thought that is teased and unpacked throughout the narrative (3). New York City is depicted as a city with its own identity, alive and thriving, even without humans. There is something categorically unique and unreal about New York’s aliveness, and Mark Spitz romanticizes and criticizes the city with equal gusto.

Zone One

As aforementioned, Zone One is segregated in a small area in Lower Manhattan, or more specifically, Chinatown. It has many skyscrapers and apartment high-rises, and comes to symbolize a dead portion of the city potentially coming back to life. For the novel’s characters, Zone One signifies rebirth, a potential reclaiming of...