| At the turn of the 20th century, the rapid development of science and technology as well as the emergence of socialized mass production represented progress of the society and human civilization, bringing convenience and fortune for human beings. On the other hand, under the influence of this kind of social change, men became obsessively indulged in fetishism and were gradually bounded by things. As an outstanding realistic novelist, Theodore Dreiser concerns the relationships between humankind and things and pays keen attention to the alienated powers which things have exerted upon individuals. And his novel An American Tragedy, which was published in 1925, gives an in-depth exploration of the confinement of things against human beings. Meanwhile Lukacs, the representative of early Western Marxist thoughts, also attaches great importance to living conditions of men and puts forward a theorized explanation of reification. He figures that "in the capitalist society, the phenomena of reifications are pervasive in human activities", and because the power of reification has already crept into every corner of people's life, "the relations around people take on the character of the thing and thus acquire a 'Phantom Objectivity', an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature:the relationships between people and things, and the relationships between people" (Lukacs 1996:108). In this sense, An American Tragedy, which is replete with phenomena of the "Phantom Objectivity", could be taken as a literature sample of Lukacs's theory of reification. Incorporating with Lukacs's thought, this thesis will analyze the phenomena of reifications of An American Tragedy, and tries to give a new interpretation of this classic novel.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One includes the background of this study, the general introduction of Theodore Dreiser and his novel An American Tragedy, and the coincidences between the novel and Lukacs's theory of reification.Chapter Two introduces Lukacs's thought of reification, makes a review on the studies of reification both at home and abroad, and gives an outline of the researches of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Based on these, this chapter shows the availability and the meaning of this study.Chapter Three mainly illustrates the reification of the relationships between man and things of An American Tragedy. Focusing on the reifications of man's labor, man's world view and man's identity, this chapter reveals that human beings have been so greatly influenced by the productions and commodities that some people are preposterously controlled by things.Chapter Four analyzes the reification of interpersonal relationships of An American Tragedy. Through exploring the reifications of three basic relationships between the protagonist and others, namely the relationships between him and his lovers, his family members and his friends, the chapter shows that the interpersonal relationships of the protagonist have been thoroughly reified.Chapter Five interprets the reification of society from two aspects:the reifications of culture and politics. The first section concentrates on the analysis of the consumption culture in order to reveal the reification of the culture, while the second section mainly describes the hearing of Clyde's murder case with the aim of disclosing the reification of the politics. Therefore this chapter shows that reification has not only suffocated the intrinsic values of human beings, but also exerted a great influence on the living environments of the man with its foray into the upper structures of the society.Chapter Six is the conclusion. It consists of the summary of the thesis and the implications of this study. And in order to conduct a further research, this chapter also points out the limitations of this thesis.In a word, with the use of Lukacs's theory of reification, this thesis analyzes the phenomena of reifications of An American Tragedy in a proper sequence and gives a reinterpretation to the cause of Clyde's tragic destiny. And these discussions of this thesis could not only remind readers to take a new look at their living conditions, but prompt them to break the fetters which have been imposed by the alienated power of reification as well. |
