THE PERSONAL CITY – ETHICAL RENEWAL IN E.L. DOCTOROW’S CITY OF GOD

Abstract

Doctorow entitles his novel City of God after Saint Augustine’s philosophical work The City of
God against the Pagans that brings forward the vision of a city for the chosen, which, however,
implies the damnation of the rest. Doctorow’s novel proposes a new dimension of this relation
between the self and the other, which focuses on the ethical and positive coordinate of salvation
discarding the vision of the inevitable damnation that awaits those who are not the chosen.