The "Consumption Field" In Fitzgerald’s Novels

As one of the great masters of American literature in the early 20th century, F. S. Fitzgerald went on high alert on consumer society and consumer phenomenon that brought up in the 1920s, especially in the Tender Is the Night, The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and Damned. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between men and commodities and the relationship between men and men through analyzing the consumption field in these three novels by applying the "field" theory of Bourdieu’s and the consumer culture of Baudrillard’s and Veblen’s.This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter One provides a brief introduction to F. S. Fitzgerald and his works, and expounds the relevant theory that will be used to the later analysis of the consumption field in the novels. The second chapter presents the definition, the essential elements and some relevant terms of the consumption field. Chapter Three mainly focuses on the relationship between people and commodities. Firs of all, people show their financial resources and highlight their economic capital through reputable wastefulness and consumption in packages and collections so that they can, to most degree, get the feeling of great honor at the same time. Then, people are indulged in manifesting their leisure status by high-bred manners and ways of consumption in the consumption field. On the basis of Bourrdieu’s theories, the relationship between men and men in the consumption field is explained in detail in Chapter Four. This sort of relationship can be distributed into two kinds in general. One is the relationship between people from the same class, including structural affinity and "keeping up with Joneses"; the other is the relationship between people from different classes, which consists of imitation and struggle. Chapter Five draws a conclusion of this thesis, elucidating different consumer activities of different people and the reasons behind it to show the anxiety about "the one-dimensional man" who just chase the symbolic value of commodities in the consumption field.The analyses in this thesis indicate the following points. (1) The number of capitals people occupies decides their consumption level. Similarly, people will put their capitals in evidence through consumption activities, which reveals that goods are not bought due to their value in use and in exchange, but their value for the status symbol. (2) Structural affinity appears among people from the same class, however, to maintain their absolute predominance in the consumption field, they "keep up with Joneses" at the same time. Meanwhile, people from the underclass want to reconstruct their identifications by consumption. (3) In reality, regardless of which class people come from, they will not obtain what they want to obtain:the upper class have become the slaves of commodities while the lower class is not able to integrate authentically into the upper society because of their original habituses. They just get stuck in the consumption trap, and into an endless pursuit of symbol value of commodities, and thus lose the meaningful and valuable lives finally. In this sense, it is truly we may say that Fitzgerald’s novels show the main pathological symptoms in modern consumer society.