Central Park enters the narrative through a contrast of views: it is the much larger park seen from the grander apartment of a writer the narrator knew briefly, recalled after a glimpse of her friend at a window overlooking a neighborhood park.

Setting

The writer lived in an apartment with a view of Central Park. The narrator, then between college and graduate school and piecing together part-time jobs, worked for her on research for a biography. The scale of the setting is emphasized by comparison: both the apartment and the park were much grander and larger than those in the narrator’s preceding recollection.

Narrative Context

Central Park helps connect two memories. Seeing her friend at a sixth-floor bedroom window across from a park prompts the narrator to recall the earlier employer and her apartment overlooking Central Park. The location thus anchors a shift from the present-day glimpse to the narrator’s younger working life, when she was assisting with a difficult biography of a woman from an old wealthy American family, once famous as a model and actress, whose psychological disorders had contributed to self-destructive misery and an untimely death.