Critique of Mass Media and Patriarchal Ideology in Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife

Abstract

This research is a study of Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife to examine the ideological functioning of the mass media and the critique of patriarchy. The novel depicts a plane crash and death of many passengers including its pilot Jack and its aftermaths. Kathryn, the wife of dead pilot, and her fifteen years old daughter Mattie do not believe in the media reports that term Jack as the responsible one for the crash. They are assaulted by media from everywhere and are more traumatized than the news of Jack’s death itself. Their social identity is ruined as they are regarded as the family of a murderer because the media had spread the rumor that Jack had taken an explosive bomb for the crash due to his suicidal purpose. This leads Kathryn to study about her husband that leads her to the discovery that his husband had hidden the fact that he had kept another wife beside her in London.