The Influence Of Mass Culture In An American Tragedy

Until now, there have been a great number of critical studies on Dreiser's masterpiece—An American Tragedy, mostly from perspectives of its naturalism or criticism of capitalism. In this paper, I will apply the notion of mass culture and Althusser's term of ideology with the help of Jean Baudrillard' consumerism theory, to make a research on the strong influence of mass culture on the hero and other characters in An American Tragedy. Therefore, we can see that the tragic fate of the hero, Griffiths Clyde, is just the product of the sharp conflict between the newly emerged culture—mass culture and the unequal capitalist class structure. Put it another way, the tragedy just results from the contradiction between capitalist class structure and the illusory ideology of mass culture. This paper mainly includes three parts. In part I, I will explain the economic background and the emergence of mass culture in America at the turn of last century, the distinctive feature of mass culture and its illusory effect, taking Clyde and other characters as examples. Part II mainly expounds the abandoning of traditional Puritan values by the characters and mass culture's overwhelming impact on them. While in the third part, I expose the sharp conflict between mass culture and the capitalist class structure, and point out that Clyde's tragedy just results from this sharp conflict, which can not be avoided in the capitalist society of America at that time.