Consumption And Alienation:Bellow's Criticism Of Consumption Culture In His Two Novels

As the representative of American Jewish writers,Saul Bellow(1915-2005)enjoys great popularity in the United States and around the world.In 1976,he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his great contribution to the world.As one of the most important writers in 20th century American literature,Bellow arouses a lot of attention from scholars at home and abroad.Bellow's works are representatives of American social history,having great realistic meanings and deep humanity concern.His works keep a high degree of consistency,and reflect the consumerism and materialism and the survival predicament human faced in the highly developed post-industrial society.In recent years,the scholars' study on Bellow develop further and the research perspectives present a trend of diversification.However,there is few papers and articles that interpret Bellow's novels,especially combining the theories of consumer society and alienation.In virtue of the French theorist Baudrillard's consumer society theory and alienation theory,this paper gives a further analysis of Bellow's two novels Humboldt's Gift and More Die of Heartbreak.The characters in both novels are deeply suffered by materialism and consumerism.They are pursuing material wealth and social positions by hook or by crook.The emptiness of people's spiritual world alienated their blindly pursuit for material things,the use-value of the objects are replaced by the sign-value.The originality of this thesis lies in two aspects:firstly,it makes a comparative study of Bellow's characters in both novels based on the theory of consumer society;secondly,from the perspective of alienation,it focuses on exploring Bellow's attitude towards consumption culture and his efforts to survive in consumer society.This thesis is mainly divided into six parts.Chapter One is the introduction of Saul Bellow's life and literary achievements and the two selected novels,the literature review and the originality of the thesis.Chapter Two is the introduction to theories about consumer society and alienation.Chapter Three is to explore Bellow's consumption culture in the selected novels Humboldt's Gift and More Die of Heartbreak,analyzing the influence of consumerism on the characters.In consumer society,the use value of object is replaced by its sign value.Through consuming different kinds of commodities,people obtain social position and social status to a certain extent.However,the change of people's consumption values in consumer society leads to the change of consumption purpose.The consumption purpose is not the use value of commodities but sign value.Influenced by the consumerism,people show off their own social status and their pursuit of money and material things,which discloses the alienation of social morality,interpersonal relationship and human spirit.Chapter Four analyzes the manifestation of alienation.Consumption deviates from need and use value,leads to the alienation from the inner self,the alienation from the out world and the alienation from others.Through analyzing the alienation relationship between the characters in the two novels,this part discusses how people gradually change from materialization toward the alienation of spirit in consumer society.Chapter Five explores the resistance to alienation in consumption culture.People use the value of objects to measure their own worth and become the slave of consumption,losing their self value.The pursuit of humanitarianism and the reconstruction of harmonious relationship are resistances to the spiritual alienation in consumer society,conveying Bellow's criticism towards the consumption culture.The last part is the conclusion of the thesis,calling people look at the society in a rational way,setting up right values of consumption.