论文总字数：37325字

An Analysis of Clyde’s Tragedy in An American Tragedy From the Perspective of Consumerism

by

Zhou Xuedong

Under the Supervision of Qiu Liping

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

English Department

School of Foreign Languages and Literature

Nanjing Tech University

June, 2018

Declaration

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person or material which has to a substantial extent been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at any university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgment has been made in the text.

Signature: __________

Name: Zhou Xuedong

___周雪冬__

Date: June 5th , 2018

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement I

Abstract(English) II

Abstract(Chinese) III

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Dreiser and An American Tragedy 1

1.2 The social background in the 1920s 2

2. Literature Review 3

2.1 Manifestations of consumerim in consumer society 3

2.1.1 Veblen’s views on conspicuous consumption in consumer society 3

2.1.2 Hedonism: prevalence in consumer society 3

2.1.3 Consumerism and social stratification 4

2.2 Previous Studies on the Novel 5

2.2.1 Previous studies on An American Tragedy abroad 5

2.2.2 Previous studies on An American Tragedy at home 5

2.3 Deficiency in previous studies 6

3. The Impacts of Consumerism on Clyde 8

3.1 The impact of conspicuous consumption on Clyde 8

3.2 The impact of hedonism on Clyde 8

3.3 The impact of social stratification on Clyde 9

3.3.1 Deficiency of consumptive ability of low-status group 9

3.3.2 Infinite dilation of possessive desire of high-status group 11

3.4 The tragedy of American society 13

3.4.1 Clyde: a victim of consumerism 13

3.4.2 Reflection of Clyde’s tragedy 14

4. Conclusion 15

Works Cited

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis.

Fist of all, my deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, Qiu Liping, for her constant encouragement and guidance. She has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without her consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form.

Second, my thanks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these years.

Last, I also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.

Abstract (English)

The classic work of Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy, described an American society that was dominated by consumerism consciousness, where the standard of success changed into the possession of materials. Under the influence of this dominant outlook on life, moral concepts have gradually been abandoned by people and replaced by the thirst for material desires. “Conspicuous consumption”, “social stratification” and “hedonism” were the productions of consumerism in consumer society.

This paper explores the role of consumerism in Clyde’s tragic life by analyzing the concrete manifestations of consumerism in the consumer society and how these manifestations influence all the important choices of Clyde in his life. In addition, this article will also analyze the growth experience and personality of the protagonist , and the basic social characteristics of the age when Clyde live, thus discovering the root cause of the tragic life of Clyde, and then revealing why the death of the protagonist is not only a tragedy of his destiny, but also the tragedy of the entire society in his time.

Key words: consumerism conspicuous consumption social stratification

tragedy

Abstract (Chinese)

西奥多·德莱塞的经典著作《美国的悲剧》描述了以消费主义意识为主导的二十世纪二十年代的美国社会。二十世纪二十年代的美国，人们所拥有的物质材料已成为衡量成功的标准。在这种消费主义成为主流人生观的时代背景下，传统的道德观念逐渐被人们所抛弃，被渴望物质的欲望所取代。随之出现的便是“炫耀性消费”、“社会分层”和“享乐主义”等社会现象。

本文通过分析消费主义在消费社会的具体表现，以及这些表现如何影响克莱德人生每个重要的选择来探讨消费主义对于克莱德悲剧人生的悲剧作用。此外，本文也将剖析主角克莱德的成长经历和个性和主角所处时代的社会基本特征，从而发现男主悲剧命运的根源，进而揭示主角的死亡不仅是自身命运的悲剧，更是其所处时代整个社会的悲剧。

关键词： 消费主义 炫耀性消费 社会分层 悲剧

1 Introduction

1.1 Dreiser and An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) is one of the realistic writers of American modern fiction. At the same time, he is a naturalist. His works are close to the lives of American people. He is also considered as a pioneer in American literature mainly because his works pave the way for the free expression of novelists and liberated American novels. Critic Kasin (1933) once demonstrated “the reason we have equated his work with reality was that for half a century he was not only a writer but also a complete chapter of American life”. As a representative writer of American realism, Dreiser’s profound influence on American literature mainly lies in his breaking the tradition of American literature and opening up American literary realism. His works have distinctive artistic features and are full of long sentences and focus on details, which is fully demonstrated in An American Tragedy.

An American Tragedy is the most important work of Theodore Dreiser. This novel is divided into three volumes. The story took the short life of an ordinary American youth, Clyde Griffith, as a clue, interweaving numerous images of American social life. The protagonist Clyde lived in a family of poor priests, but his family has not been blessed by the God. An American Tragedy introduced the protagonist’s depression, struggle, degeneration and destruction and other behavioral characteristics. This novel was adapted from a real murder case in 1906 in which Chester Gillette has murdered his girlfriend. Although the media gave a detailed account of the incident, the author still believed that the underlying reasons behind the murder have not been uncovered. Dreiser himself, as a writer living under the background of such an era, wrote what he saw, heard and thought in his work An American Tragedy. Dreiser was born in a very poor family and he was the thirteenth child of his family. Dreiser owned a similar childhood with the main character, Clyde. Dreiser came to big city to make a life on his own and was attempted by the prosperity of the big city, which was the same as Clyde’s experience. Therefore, An American Tragedy also serves as a cry for the author to criticize social reality.

1.2 The social background in the 1920s

Dreiser lived in the United States from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, where tremendous changes had taken place. At this time, the United States achieved remarkable achievements in the world and people’s living standards improved. The history of consumerism in US can be traced back to this period of time. From the previous years of the World War I to the midpoint of 1920s, almost every aspect of American life was shaped by the changes. Those changes were caused by the increasing urbanization, industrialization in the US, and the War itself created an emergent and materialistic society.

As a result, America has entered the consumer society. From monopolism to capitalism, consumer ideology has gradually replaced production ideology. Consumerism, at this time, guided and regulated people’s behaviors in consumption, thoughts, aspirations, emotions and corresponding practices. It advocated luxury consumption, the desire for material enjoyment and recreation, which were regarded as the purpose and value of life. At this point, people spent money for entertainment and enjoyment, even they did not really need, and the consumption and possession of material virtually weakened the diligence, thrifty, saving, self-control and other traditional ethical standards.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Manifestations of consumerism in consumer society

2.1.1 Veblen’s views on conspicuous consumption in consumer society

The term “conspicuous consumption” was first put forward by Veblen, an American social critic and economist, in the book The Theory of the Leisure Class. “Conspicuous consumption” is consumption undertaken to make a statement to others about one’s class or social status. In his another famous book Conspicuous Consumption (1902), Veblen points out that as wealth accumulates, the leisure class developed its further functions in clarifying social structure, and there arose a differentiation within the class. According to Veblen, social status was decided by one’s birth, history and family name at earlier stages, and expenditure ranked second for maintaining social status. Later, spending patterns started reflecting one’s social class and people’s hierarchical structure could be easily distinguished from their tastes, clothing and living room. Therefore, to wear right clothes and have living room decorated with exquisite household products was necessary for achieving social respect. Especially in America, where birth, history and family name are less prominent, consumption becomes the most prominent standard for demonstrating social status and personal identity. As for the high-status group in An American Tragedy, all the material possessions are symbols of high class. If one wants to be a member of the high-status class, material possessions are one of the most important standards to define whether he is in the class he belongs to.

2.1.2 Hedonism: prevalence in consumer society

“Psychologically, hedonism refers to the behavior motivated by the desire for pleasure, and the avoidance of pain”. (Enfield, 2010). Hedonism advocates that all the behaviors should serve for the eventual happiness and people should try everything to increase the chances to enjoy life. The chances to enjoy life and the pursuit of sexual pleasure are usually considered as two typical forms of Hedonism. The development of American society provided opportunities for American people. Back to 1920s, Americans were the first one to wear ready-made, exact-sized clothing. They were the first one to listen to the commercial broadcast and enjoy fresh juice all year round. Consumer goods were worshiped by Americans, especially for the young generation. They were the passionate practitioners of Hedonism, which was prevalent in the early period of consumerism. All the changes in the 1920s were experienced by the young generation.

2.1.3 Consumerism and social stratification

Consumerism mainly refers to a sort of attitude upon cultures, values and lifestyles, which is represented by America. It is ubiquitous in other western capitalist countries and sometimes appears in undeveloped countries. Consumerism regards conspicuous, extravagant consumption as the purpose and the ultimate value of life. It sees novelty as a important part of life. From the perspective of sociology, one’s social status and identity can be realized by the consumption and possession of materials, in order to demonstrate one’s concrete lifestyle, social class and sense of superiority. The consumerism with these kinds of characteristics is a propeller for the progress of social stratification. The process has played a huge role in social stratification.

“Layering” was originally a geological term and refers to different aspects of geological formations. Sociologists have discovered that between people and groups, between groups and groups, they are divided into hierarchical levels with high and low order, as in stratum structure, forming the sociological category of “social stratification.” In the history of Western sociology, the earliest theory of social stratification was put forward by German sociologists, Weber. Weber proposed to divide the triple standard of the social hierarchy. Wealth-economic standards, Prestige--social standards, and Power-political standards. Wealth refers to the life opportunities of members of society in the economic market, that is, income as an economic standard divides all the people into different social classes and class structures. Social standards refer to reputation and respect gained by oneself in the environment he live. In Western stratification theory, social members are often divided into different social identity groups according to this standard. Weber’s most important contribution to the theory of social stratification is to propose and define identity concepts that are different from the class concept.

2.2 Previous Studies on the novel

2.2.1 Previous studies on An American Tragedy abroad

Since published in 1925, An American Tragedy triggered heated debates on all sides. Among those who made critical comments on this work, Wilson(1940) and Adams(1940) were of the most importance. Wilson attacked Dreiser’s writing technique. He argued that the novel was “the worse-written great novel in the world” (Wilson 197). Adams (1944) focused on the theme of the novel. He considered it as the representative of all that went wrong with naturalism. He pointed out, in the Shape of Books to Come, that men “have tended to keep their characters on the animal plane and Dreiser’s thinking was never more confused and never more sentimental than it was in the writing of An American Tragedy” (Adams 107). Bennett (1953) gave critical evaluation of this novel “it is written abominably, by a man who evidently despises style, elegance, clarity, even grammar. Even his supporter, Menchen (1956), had trashed An American Tragedy as “a vast, sloppy, chaotic thing of 385,000 words—at least 250,000 of them unnecessary”(Menchen 309). However, vast majority of scholars gave high praise for An American Tragedy. Meanwhile, they studied this novel from various aspects. Some scholars have done research on this work in light of literary theories such as psycho analysis, feminism and deconstruction. Jean (1986) pointed in the article “Social Deconstruction and An American Tragedy” hat after reading closely, deconstruction could help to demonstrate the ambiguity of Clyde’s responsibility for the death of Roberta.

2.2.2 Previous studies on An American Tragedy at home

Many scholars in China also made research on An American Tragedy from different perspectives such as consumerism, naturalism, determinism and writing skills. Xu Ruzhi, the translator of the novel, wrote an article about the features of Dreiser’s artistic plot creation of the novel in 1982 and indicated that Dreiser demonstrated his obscure socialist views in this novel. In 1990s, Zhang did some research on the relationship between Clyde’s tragic fate and American social tragedy to expose the true nature of capitalist society in On the Features of Realism of American Tragedy. Zheng, from Lanzhou University touched on determinist factors when analyzing the artistic techniques in the novel in her master thesis An Analysis of the Theme and Artistic Techniques in An American Tragedy, but failed to offer a detailed and systematic analysis of how hereditary and environmental factors exert great influence on the fate of Clyde. Run (2005) analyzed the embodiment of consumerism in An American Tragedy, in the article of Analysis of Consumerism in An American Tragedy. Zhou (2011) claimed in the article of The Influence of consumerism on the tragic humanity by analyzing An American Tragedy, that Clyde’s tragic experience of life just came from blind pursuit of certain life styles under the influence of consumerism consciousness. It stems from the over-desire of unreal life dreams, but also because of his own self-consciousness of consumerism and the lack of a correct understanding of society. It can be said that he is a victim of his own character tragedy, a victim of the tragedy of the times, and a victim of the tragedy of consumerism. He pointed out that consumerism exerted a great impact on Clyde’s tragic life. He analyzed how the family environment change the personality of Clyde on the whole, but he did not elaborate in detail, which was hard to convince the readers. An Analysis of Clyde’s personal tragedy from An American Tragedy, which was written by Wu Yan, maintained that Clyde's own personality traits, ideas and distorted outlook on life, is the key to the consequences of his tragedy.

2.3 Deficiency in previous studies

An American Tragedy has received widespread attention since it was published. An American Tragedy reveals the tragic nature of life through the ruthless exposure and criticism of the phenomenon of American society and the nature of evil, and strongly stirs the heartbeat of readers, triggering people’s deep concern for social reality. Ranging from writing skills to analysis of the main character’s tragedy, those previous studies on An American Tragedy mentioned above have done research on this book from various perspectives, such as naturalism, psycho, conflicts between Puritanism and Hedonism, etc. However, few scholars discussed the influence of consumerism on the hero’s humanity, which should be attached much more importance.

As we all know, the protagonist, Clyde, was not an evil at the beginning even if he grew up in a poor family. How did he become a person who schemed to murder his pregnant lover step by step in a consumer society? How did people’s consumerism consciousness influence Clyde’s every decision? Few scholars made research on the way of consumerism affecting the main character’s decisions in his whole lifetime.

This thesis is to analyze the embodiment of consumerism in the 1920s based on Thorstein Veblen’s views on conspicuous consumption in consumer society and to analyse how consumerism influence Clyde’s every decision and the causes of Clyde’s eventual degeneration by exploring his every important life stages. In addition, the deep implication that why the death of the main character is a tragedy, even a social tragedy, will be illustrated in this article.

3 The Impacts of Consumerism on Clyde

3.1 The impact of conspicuous consumption on Clyde

People who were affected by conspicuous consumption were willing to spend their money in buying clothes or other kinds of entertainment. Under such circumstance, all the young men that were from a poor family like Clyde would spend most of their income on pretty clothes, nice dinner and beautiful lady. Back to 1920s, to date with a beautiful rich lady was a symbol of getting close to the upper class. Take Clyde for example, when he was a waiter in the big restaurant and he could get a considerable income. His plan to spend the money was not to subsidize his mother. Instead, he schemed to spend his money in pleasing a beautiful girl by buying an expensive cloak. Although he already knew his sister’s plight and she might need more money to help herself getting out the dilemma, he decided to keep the most of his income from his sister. The reason for his behaviors was that Clyde believed his families were helpless for his getting into the upper class. Instead, they would be burdens for him. Clyde needed more money to content his girlfriend who signified his difference from the boys sharing the same poor birth with him. Here the psychology of conspicuous consumption dominated Clyde and all the young men like him, which caused his staying at the stage of degeneration.

3.2 The impact of hedonism on Clyde

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