消费社会中的迷茫自我--解读《再见,哥伦布》

The Lost Self in the Consumer Society: A Reading of Goodbye,Columbus

美国作家菲利普·罗斯的《再见,哥伦布》讲述了主人公尼尔·克勒门的一段短暂恋情,展示了消费文化对个人生活和社会关系的影响。身处消费社会,尼尔不自觉地采取了以商品的符号价值来解读周围的人和世界的视角。尼尔恋爱失败的根本原因在于他在消费社会的矛盾处境:一方面受到它表象的诱惑向往物质富足的生活,另一方面又受其意识形态和规则制约无法实现阶级跨越;既对现状不满又无法超越,只好在迷茫中妥协,重新开始找寻自我。

Goodbye, Columbus, by American writer Philip Roth, tells a short-lived love story of Neil Klugman and shows how consumer culture exerts its influence on both individual life and social relations. Living in a consumer society, Neil has involuntarily adopted a perspective of looking at the world and oth-er people based on the sign values of the commodities they consume. The failure of Neil＇s love originates from his ambivalent situation in the consumer society, in which he is, on the one hand, lured by its su-perficial abundance and aspires for material enjoyment, and, on the other hand, restricted by its ideology and rules and unable to move to a higher social class. Caught up in between his dissatisfaction and inabil-ity to make changes, Neil has to compromise and start over to recover his lost self.