Critique of Consumerist Culture in West’s The Day of the Locust
Date
2018-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Facuty of Art in English
Abstract
The present research paper analyzes the fragmentation and
artificiality caused by consumerist culture in Nathanael west’s The Day of the Locust.
Beside this, the researcher has tried to find how the social rule, costume, human
desires, languages, families and materialistic desires are determined by the state, how
state rules over common people and attempts to prove how state agencies break the
natural desires of the people. Moreover, it tries to find out how the protagonist, Tod
and other common characters are compelled to live under the shadow of capitalist
ideology due to the desires of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. In order to
analyze the text, the researcher has brought the idea of Louis Althusser’s Ideological
state apparatus. On the basis of Althusserian ideology, the research establishes an
idea how the state ideologies shape desires of the ordinary people in the society and
how common people have become victims of consumerist culture.
Description
Keywords
ideological state apparatus, consumerism and American dream., Fragmentation, state