The city as a place for the development of a teenager's personality in contemporary American literature

The subject of this study is the representation of urban space as a site of adolescent development and internal transformation in contemporary American literature. The focus is on the semiotic and narrative role of New York City in J.D. Salinger's novels "The Catcher in the Rye," D. Tartt's "The Goldfinch," and J.S. Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," as well as Alexandria in D. Tartt's novel "The Little Friend."The city is examined not only as a topographic reality but also as a multidimensional cultural code that defines the value orientations, psychological state, and behavioral strategies of the teenage protagonist. Particular attention is paid to how interaction with the urban environment reveals key stages of initiation: loss, search, encounter with the Other, and self-discovery. It analyzes how urban loci (Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum, and New York City's boroughs) become semantic centers in which the internal drama of development unfolds. The study concludes that the provincial town plays a special role in the coming-of-age narrative, shaping the metaphysical and symbolic space of event and memory. The methodology of the study relies on a comprehensive approach that integrates semiotic principles (V.N. Toporov and Yu.M. Lotman's concept of the "urban text"), as well as methods of motif, comparative, and structural-compositional analysis, allowing us to identify the specific interactions between the teenage protagonist and the urban environment.The article's scientific novelty lies in the fact that it is the first to systematically examine the multifunctionality of the New York/provincial chronotope within the context of the initiation novel genre, using these works as a basis. It demonstrates that the "urban text" serves not simply as a backdrop but as a meaning-making element, simultaneously reviving traditional American literary motifs of loneliness and alienation and serving as a space for the protagonist's maturation.It has been demonstrated that New York and Alexandria in the novels under study serve as multifaceted plot-forming spaces. They combine features of a hostile, impersonal space that tests the character, and a sacred locus where existential quests and personal healing take place. The specificity of the depiction (from isolated locations to citywide routes) emphasizes the characters' liminal state and their gradual evolution.