New York City, NY

Although no settings are featured in any great detail, the speaker makes a handful of references to New York City, where the author himself lives. New York City is the most populous city in the United States, and an internationally recognized financial, commercial, and cultural center. It is also frequently understood as a place where people go to pursue their dreams, to “hustle” and climb their way to the top. In that sense, New York City makes a fitting backdrop for this poem about pursuing your dreams. That said, the poem makes only one over reference to New York City, which it calls “the Big Apple” (30). The scarcity of these references is in keeping with the author’s overall strategy to use generality over specificity so as to apply his thinking about dreams to all kinds of dreams and all kinds of people.

Brooklyn, NY