The Consumerism Culture in "American Tragedy"

DOI

10.2991/icadce-16.2016.47How to use a DOI?

Keywords

American Tragedy; consumerism culture; conspicuous consumption

Abstract

Theodore Dreiser, the famous American novelist, created a capitalist world filled with materialistic desires and consumerism in American Tragedy, one of his masterpieces. All the characters in the novel, without exception, have been blinded by materialism and have gradually abandoned the traditional ethics in the mad pursuit of the material world. The hero's chasing and longing for tangible goods is actually the psychological demands of social status and identity which symbolizes these consumption goods, and the hero's falling psychological process is actually the one in which the hero's psychology has been alienated by the consumerism culture. In this paper, the author comprehensively explores the consumerism culture in American Tragedy through analyzing the hero's pursuit of clothes, private cars, houses and other goods, and reveals the roots of the tragedy of the novel ---- the irrational conspicuous consumption.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuai Chen
PY  - 2016/05
DA  - 2016/05
TI  - The Consumerism Culture in "American Tragedy"
BT  - Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 215
EP  - 217
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-16.2016.47
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-16.2016.47
ID  - Chen2016/05
ER  -