Sister Carrie In The Context Of Consumer Society

Sister Carrie, the first novel of American writer Theodore Dreiser, is rich in social connotations. This novel takes the American society at the transitional period between the nineteenth and twentieth century as its background. At that time, America was experiencing a profound transition from a production-oriented society to a consumption-oriented one. Under such background, consumerism began to dominate the whole society of America. In Sister Carrie, Dreiser develops a keen insight into the specific reflection and influence of consumerism. Strongly affected by consumption ideology, people's worldview, lifestyle, and social relations all experience a great change:it promotes individuals'increasingly worship of conspicuous consumption and the hedonistic lifestyle; it arouses their strong consuming desire and thus enslaves them; it materializes and commodifies the interpersonal relationship such as family and friend relations. The writer assumes that people's excessive pursuit of the sign value and the manipulation of the media contribute to the above changes. In the consumer society, the commodities have not only the sign value but also the symbolic connotation which orientates the modern consumers'adoration from objects to the image and implication attached to the objects. The unceasing edification of the media not only stimulates people's desires but also deprives of their subjectivity and makes them the object of manipulation. Therefore, the writer concludes that people in the context of consumer society are inevitably influenced by consumerism, so the characters in the novel who devote to sign value of wealth and status are doomed to tragedy.