Analysis Of Consumerism In An American Tragedy

Dreiser produces his longest novel An American Tragedy in the 1920s when Americans are stimulated by the so called Alger myth to pursue their success, but Dreiser offers the opposite version of the myth as the result of his penetrating observation to the intensity of American cultural conflicts.In the novel Dreiser portrays Clyde according to a crime story happened during this period who comes onto the stage as a representative of those who desperately climb the social ladder as to be somebody while finally ends up in prison and dead. Through such depiction, Dreiser tends to exposes that Alger myth is merely a fairy tale and to subvert such nearly religious philosophy of"success"which composes a crucial element of the national outlook of the era. Dreiser's An American Tragedy has been interpreted from a variety of aspects and found to be significant in revelation of real American society, but among these interpretations, less importance has been attached to Dreiser's accurate catch of its rising cultural tension expressed latterly as modern consumer culture in which consumerism is the key note.The emphasis of this thesis is to trace down evidences of American consumerism from the angle of the components which forms the main dimension of consumerism: status-pursuit by possession and consumption of commodities as automobiles, residence and fineries, which are in effect treated as the symbols of social position, for they are endowed with additional value besides the use value, that is the sign value which even surpasses the material property; and another task of the thesis is to analyze the impacts of consumerism reflected by Dreiser through his arrangement of the fate of his heroes who live in consumer culture circumstance, who inevitably are under the irresistible influence of it and who accept consumption as their only choice of self-identification; at last the attitude of the great author towards consumerism and his exploration of the significance of life will be concerned.