The Oppression Of Man In A Postmodern Consumer Society

Man Descending analyzed in this thesis is written by Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe (1951 - ). As his debut, the book won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1982. It is a collection of 12 short stories in which Vanderhaeghe casts his eyes on a group of male protagonists who are described as descending on the road of life. Most of them are frustrated in their jobs, dwarfed in front of their wives, or considered eccentrics by their friends and burdens by their families. Anyhow, they count on their inner courage, unwilling to descend, attempting to alter the increasingly deteriorating conditions of life. The author, with his bitter yet humorous language and sympathetic tone, reveals Canadian men's mentality and emotions when facing humiliation, frustration, failure and death in a postmodern consumer society.Through a number of interrelated stories carefully wrought around a central theme, Vanderhaeghe shows us a true-to-life picture about the oppression inflicted upon Canadian men in a postmodern consumer society. In that society, all consumer goods are identified with cultural symbols, representing one's economic position, social status and personal identity. By analyzing those symbols, the changes of men's psychological and social mechanisms can be revealed. What is more, men are deprived of their discourse powers in that society for their inability to possess consumer goods and then social status. They are thus forced to be silent. Furthermore, because of Canadian typical cultural and historical background, men's endeavor to survive in that environment is more painstaking and futile than in other western countries. Thus, Canadian men bear huge oppression in the postmodern consumer society.This thesis, based on such theories as Baudrillard's on the consumer society, Foucault's on discourse power, and Cornell's on masculinities, tries to analyze the male protagonists'living conditions and dilemmas in a postmodern consumer society described in Man Descending, testifies the production of madness and oppression of human nature under the operation of a power system, and further explores the reasons for those men's failure. Finally, following the hints in Man Descending, the author of this thesis attempts, though tentatively, to propose possible measures to relieve the oppression suffered by Canadian men.Apart from an introduction in which the author and its works as well as the theoretical bases are discussed, the thesis consists of four chapters. The first illustrates the oppression of man in a postmodern consumer society by studying the three pairs of relationships: man and society; man and man; man and woman. The second chapter explores the reasons why men's oppression exists in the society. There are three reasons: the impact of commodity logic in a postmodern consumer society, the oppression from discourse power and the survival theme in Canadian literature. The third chapter reveals the abnormal effect brought by men's oppression including physical weakness, loss of masculinity and the lunatic state. Furthermore, people's alienation in the postmodern consumer society is reflected in this chapter. The forth one tries to propose some solutions to those problems.