The Consumer Heroes In American Novels In The Early20th Century

Theodore Dreiser, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis are allrepresentative writers at the beginning of the1900s. While Dreiser is regarded as thefirst American writer to bid farewell to traditionμ, lead readers into a new eraμ andexplores new trends for American novelsμ, Fitzgerald is called the spokesman of theJazz Ageμ. Lewis is just as unique in that he is the first American author who wasawarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his vivid disclosure of the American nationalcharacter as well as the characteristics of the American society. Using realist techniques,the three writers represented the American society as it was at the beginning of20thcentury and portrayed a miniature of the various people living in it in their respectivemasterpieces Sister Carrie（1900）, The Great Gatsby（1925）and Babbitt（1922）.Critics both at home and abroad have analyzed the three masterpieces by theserepresentative writers from such perspectives as theme, characters, artistic techniquesand narrative features，and there have also been quite a number of studies conductedfrom the perspective of consumer culture. Although these previous studies, based onspecific case analyses, have emphasized the appearance of certain new features in thecharacters of these novels, they failed to summarize and evaluate such featuressystematically. The present study is at once an attempt to summarize and evaluatecomprehensively the new type of characters (also called consumer heroes) and anexploration into their characteristics and historical/cultural significance.The present thesis consists of five chapters that fall into three parts, namely, theintroduction, the body and the concluding remarks.The introduction consists of four parts, covering such topics as the life, literaryachievements and representative works of Dreiser, Fitzgerald and Lewis, summaries ofstudies on the three novels both at home and abroad and the feasibility of usingconsumerism as the approach and perspective for this study.Chapters two, three and four forms the body of the thesis and a systematic analysisof the new characteristics of the consumer heroes as a new type of characters inAmerican literary history. In Chapter two endless possession and consumption ofcommodities, the first characteristic of the consumer hero, is discussed in detail.Chapter three is an analysis of how the consumer heroes construct and raise their social status through sign consumption, conspicuous consumption and standard consumptionand pecuniary emulation. Chapter four is a discussion of the third characteristics of theconsumer heroes, pointing out that while they do pursue fame and benefit throughconsumption, they are also nothing but sacrifices of the consumer society living in theabyss of desperation.Chapter five serves as a summary. It points out that as products of the consumersociety, consumer heroes bear such common features as endless desire to purchase andconsume, pursuit for social status and final desperation. As a new type of literarycharacters, the consumer heroes have had a strong and profound influence on worldliterature in general and American literature in particular. The fact that the writers·attitudes to them are obscure somewhat acted as a social opinion that enhanced the riseof consumer culture.