Theodore Dreiser is regarded as an influential American novelist in the early 20th century. His novel, Sister Carrie, not only makes him well-known all over the world, but also settles his literary status in America. Sister Carrie mainly tells Carried process of actualization from a penniless girl to an elegant woman. When climbing up the ladder of the upper strata, she does not win her dreaming happiness, but the endless hopelessness and mental torture. The novel was created in 1900 when the modern consumer culture boomingly rises; people’s value orientations and behavior modes were largely determined by the consumption ideology. The new production-oriented ideologies gradually give way to the consumption-oriented one in American society. …show more content…
In such a society, consumer culture places more emphasis on material consumption and people gain great satisfaction just through the possession of materials, which gradually weakens the traditional moral standards of hardworking and frugality. In other words, consumer culture is a kind of the materialized lifestyles. It fully applauds consumption and lures people to consume ostentatiously in order to display their purchasing luxurious commodities and consumptive powers. In the process of worshiping materials, American society is gradually becoming the law of the jungle and their main life goal has already simplified a kind of the material satisfaction. Now, the possession of wealth is no longer to satisfy peopled basic needs, but an indicator of social identity and high-quality life. In the novel, Dreiser depicts in detail the characters5 crazy cravings for materials. Living in such a materialistic society, people are full of endless desires for various conspicuous consumptions, such as vogue clothes, magnificent residences, luxurious hotels, saloons and splendid theatres, …show more content…
He was born in Terre Haute, India, on August 27, 1871, the thirteen children in his family. His mother did not receive enough education, and his father always held a serious attitude towards him. From his parents, though he got little educational knowledge, yet he seemed to have developed a habit of enthusiastic wonder and inherited moral earnestness and the ability to endure in facing of the failure. Living in a poor and religious family, Dreiser had an unhappy childhood. At the age of fifteen, he quitted school and went to Chicago, earning little income through a variety of trivial jobs to meet the ends. With the help of a high school teacher, he learnt at Indiana University during a year, but honestly speaking, his knowledge mostly came from experience and from reading and thinking by himself. During learning at the university, the literary theory of those outstanding American writers, including Charles Darwin, Thornes Huxlay and Herbert Spenser, was exposed to Dreiser, and he began to be interested in the writing of essays in his spare time. However, learning at the Indiana University made it difficult to survive in the hardship, so he returned the Chicago after a year doing some odd job from the bottom of the American society. The longing dream of Dreiser was to be a writer, so he made a beginning by working as a journalist in
Many Americans love shopping, especially during the holidays, with its captivating discounts and sales, which lead to uncontrollable splurges on irrelevant things. According to Quindlen, this is an example of America’s crazed consumerism and it is absolutely absurd. In her article, “Honestly, You Shouldn’t Have”, she states that there is currently an assumption that purchasing American merchandises symbolize an act of patriotism and at the same time, build a strong economy. She also states that we, as Americans, need to acknowledge important spiritual values such as friends and family rather than material goods.
A capitalist society encourages exploitation of workers through consumerism. This can be observed in Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) by recognizing how use-value, exchange-value and surplus-value in our society promotes exploitation. The documentary provides insight that the usefulness of a thing, or the use-value, is often disregarded when people purchase commodities to keep up with trends rather than for its use. Exchange-value exists within capitalism, where consumers are not as interested at an item’s usefulness. Rather, they are more interested in its monetary value and what they can obtain in exchange for the
Nevertheless, the interviewees frown upon being labelled as someone that values luxury over reasonable spending. Hence, they expressed their emphasis on the importance of needs over wants, and that practicality should triumph over extravagance. They see “limited” consumption as a form of self discipline, where excessive spending was only justifiable when it is spent on the family and invested in the children. If
Mark Spitz states that “he was crestfallen when he ate at another location for the first time” and he recognized the “same stuff on the wall” (189). This moment is crucial because it emphasizes how even the most precious and sentimental aspects of our life are a result of consumer culture. Many aspects cleverly crafted to appear as a one-of-a-kind product or experience actually result in a slightly customizable template. Similarly, Sorensen explains consumerism as “the capacity to realize and replicate itself by borrowing against the guaranteed promise of the future as the site of more of the same and of endlessness of reproduction without difference” (562-3). Whitehead further supports this idea by illuminating the reproduction of a one-of-a-kind
Within society, materialism is often associated with success and prosperity. In the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, there was a pattern of how even though the most successful characters were also the most materialistic, they were not always the happiest. Two characters that were at either end of the scale of materialism were Macon and Pilate. These very different lifestyles that Macon and Pilate lived, Macon being heavily materialistic and Pilate not at all, caused them to develop different attitudes that were influenced heavily by materialism. Through the analysis of the mystery of Pilate’s and Macon’s lifestyles, Morrison illustrates that materialism destroys people and prevents them from achieving freedom.
In “What is Cultural Identity” by Elsie Trumbull and Maria Pacheco it states that “we can imagine culture as invisible webs of composed values, beliefs, ideas about appropriate behavior, and socially constructed truths”, according to this statement culture is embedded into us and effects the way people see everything. It’s hard for people to see their culture, in addition this evidence says “Most of the time our cultures are invisible to us yet they are the context within which we operate and make sense of the world.” Therefore culture has an effect on everyone.
I’m astounded by how different the views on consumerism are for people living in a developing country compared to a first world country like Canada. I only noticed how unacceptable my addiction to consumerism is when it was time to pack my luggage for the flight home and I wasn’t able to fit everything and thus I’m forced to leave nearly 70$ worth of goods behind. It was the first time where I legitimately felt unintelligent with what I was spending my money on and my relatives to this day create no shortage of teasing about it.
The concept of consumerism was first brought to my awareness in First Year Writing. I admit, before this intro course, I was indeed ignorant of the negative impacts that consumption had on society. FYS opened my mind to the dangers of over-consumption, and more importantly, helped me see beyond what meets the eye. Take for example, Disney, a seemingly innocent corporation, a company’s whose name is practically synonymous with the notion of childhood innocence. Upon initial judgement, one would assume that Disney is merely harmless family entertainment.
It should not be about buying a house, car, boat, etc. Why materialism made a sudden leap in this era, I would think the media has something to do with that. It’s understandable to work up to those additions, but they should not just be the “goal” that one works up for! Somewhere along the way, the pursuit of pleasure started taking hold of the dream. Life should not be shallow.
Everyone in the world in the world seems to know who the Kardashians are, wherever you look they seem to appear, on billboards, magazines, in salons, on the internet, pictures of them are plastered everywhere. The Kardashian family is popular culture. In this essay I will be discussing consumerism, the role of technology in consumer culture and materialism in accordance to the show Keeping Up With The Kardashians and the Kardashian family, and explaining it through conflict theory. Conflict theory dictates ideas coined by Karl Marx (1818-1833) who has divided the social groups into two classes, the bougeousie and the proliteriate. He states that because of the inequality in the power balance and the bourgeousie having a capitalist hold over the proletariates, they abuse their power over the proletariates.
Everyone has their own unique cultural identity. Individuality is the genetic code for differences and individuality, and it allows people to perceive certain aspects of the world through a different lens. Everyone has different tastes in music, different behavioral attributes, and different facial features that set others apart. To a great extent, one’s culture informs the way they view others and the world.
Consumption In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, the concepts of consumerism and utopia are continuously compared and discussed in tandem with one another to decide if any correlation between them is present. Although people may argue that the humans belonging to the World State are happy, their lack of simple human pleasures such as love, religion, intellect, free will, etc, denies the people of actual joy. Since the government is what controls these pleasures by glorifying consumption, the World State’s culture and consumerism must interrelate. The government's control of common human experiences and characteristics such as love, pain, religion, and free will result in the total dependence on the state.
The American society is a materialistic system, causing self-destruction, depression, and health problems. Materialism means placing a higher value on objects. This has usually considered objects, which has more value than experiences, personal relationships and beliefs. In American society, people have been trained to think that; they are “required” to have more material things in order to be happy. According to Tim Kasser, “The more materialistic
Commentary Essay on Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today The American people are focusing more on materialistic items, people are shopping for pleasure more than necessity. This article comments on how people are shopping to release stress or to gain pleasure. Even though the article was written in 1984, it is still pertinent to modern time. In Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today by Phyllis Rose, varied sentence length, different point of views, and anaphora are utilized to prove that society is becoming consumed in materialism.
Very few books in the history of economic thought still render an accurate portrayal of society today. Written 115 years ago, Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Social Class (1899) describes a materialistic society obsessed with reputation and social status, echoing a portrayal of the modern capitalistic consumer culture that defines us today. As Roger Mason (1998), professor of consumer theory states: “Consuming for status has, in fact, become a defining element of the new consumer societies” (p.vii). In his treatise, Veblen’s discusses such a society, in order to portray the ‘leisure class’, the 19th century society that characterized the upper class that formed as a consequence of the Second Industrial Revolution. Such a society uses the consumption of goods and leisure as means of climbing up the social ladder.