ENG252Y1 Lecture : JPOD.docx
Document Summary
A novel of ideas rather than of psychological relationships. Change in terms of personal identity as well. How this novel is diagnosing contemporary society. Ramen noodles page: he has taken something that was once part of a specific cultural tradition and reproduced it to fill the entire page to show how mass production has spread. The act of assemblage using materials at hand. So mark, even as he"s offering up the idea of depth, still remains in this book a series of marks on the page. Right after we get his story about the storage container we"re given another spam email that is promoting penis enlargement. Structurally there"s something interesting going on here, undermining mark"s claim that he has a soul, psychological depth. What mark"s story does give us, though, is a metaphor for consumption: objects of literal and figurative consumption. Suggestion, in contrast with mark, is that character is less about what"s inside than what we surround ourselves with.
