The Technological Revolution and American Literature
Life in America from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the
twentieth changed quite dramatically. Over the course of that century, Americans saw the
expansion of the country’s population and landmass, the end of slavery, the invention of the
telegraph, the discovery of gold in California, the women’s rights movement take off, the
fighting of the Civil War, the reconstruction of the South, the completion of the transcontinental
railroad, the invention of the telephone, and the fighting of the Spanish-American War.
Life in America during the early part of the century differed greatly from life in America at the
turn of the twentieth.
During the Romantic Period (1800-1860), American life was mostly agrarian at opening
of century, but rapidly moving toward industrialization. State governments had much power,
with the federal government existing primarily for defense of the country; states would collect
taxes, issue money, set their own laws. Egalitarian (democratic) beliefs were predominant;
individualism important. In this environment, a distinctive American literature grew: Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry Thoreau.
During the Realistic Period (1860-1900), however, American life had changed: There
was a rise of industrialization in the north. The federal government gained more power. There
was a triumph of materialism during the second half of the century, what Twain called “The
Gilded Age,” an age of extremes, including decline & progress, poverty and wealth, gloom and
hope. The major writers of this era took note of these social changes and directed their attention
to it: Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and several minor local color writers,
including Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman.
Additionally, The Civil War upset the social structure: Even though it was a conflict
about the right to own slaves, the Civil War also pitted the states against the federal government,
so states rights were diminished when the North defeated the South. Federal government gained
more power: first national conscription (draft) law; first time that federal income taxes were
levied; first national currency—paper money backed by the federal government. Shift from
agrarian south to industrialized north, which provided the ideal environment for such capitalists
as Andrew Carnegie (steel) and John D. Rockefeller (oil) to control enormous corporations and
to amass great wealth.
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman explains the connection between
events/innovations and belief systems:
“[I]n every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of
the thing itself. It has been pointed out, for example, that the invention of
eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective
vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the
endowments of nature or the ravages of time” (14).
And we see this impact through the influence that the industrial revolution had on
common sentiments about human beings and represented in the changing American literature.
The most significant changes, mass communication and migration, heavily impacted people’s
belief systems: The telegraph united the country intellectually; railroads united the country
physically, and this new unity made people feel more connected to the rest of the country, which
resulted in less emphasis on individualism. Also, these technologies were a vehicle for
commerce, which emphasized materialism rather than the spiritualism or idealism of the early
1800s. These technologies promoted the growth of big business and big industry, which further
widened the gulf between the rich and the poor. Late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century American culture was a changing environment, lots of new technologies, lots of
innovation, and these changes showed up throughout literature through a concern about the
effects of technology on its users. This concern will be particularly noted as America enters into
the post-World War I era when the devastating consequences to which technology can be
rendered will come clear.
Literary Cultural Manifestations
Literature often draws from the time period in which it was written. Yes, literature will
depict universal concerns of all human beings living no matter when, but literature is also written
in a specific time and at a specific place and will always reveal the contingencies it has to that
world. Three great examples of this interaction between the culture and the literature that culture
produces are Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and C.M.
Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl’s The Space Merchants, all products of the 1950s American culture.
During World War II, Lawrence Samuel explains, the American Dream had been
effectively defined as ownership of mass-produced consumer goods. And manufacturers were
happy to oblige these consumers by offering more and more products for them to purchase.
Television itself was both a product of this new consumer-driven society and a vehicle by which
that consumer-driven society was promoted, becoming a new medium to expand the reach of the
already culturally dominant advertising industry. Depictions of 1950s American life such as
those found on popular television programs, Saturday Evening Post covers, and advertisements
of the time also present a thriving American culture whose vitality derived almost exclusively—
at least in the popular imagination—from consumer capitalism.
Many critics of the system used literature to challenge the system, its consequences, and
the values that underpinned it, and in doing so, these writers attempted to reveal the consumer
capitalist society of 1950s America as a pseudo-utopia, a place that only appeared to offer its
inhabitants a positive life experience. Three such books are representative of the critiques levied
against consumer capitalism in the 1950s: Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952), Ray
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space
Merchants (1953). Each novel depicts an America whose inhabitants are enslaved to their
products, quite a different perspective than the one offered by Firestone’s advertisement whose
model seems pleased with the products available to her and absolutely in control of those
products.
The nightmare worlds of Player Piano, Fahrenheit 451, and The Space Merchants re-
envision the commercial pseudo-utopia depicted in contemporaneous advertisements. The
environments of the novels mirror 1950s American society; these fictional societies, too, are
defined by consumer goods: mass-produced suburban homes, automobiles, television, pre-
packaged food, off-the-rack clothing, household appliances, and home décor. But the tone of the
novels in their depictions of these consumer goods transforms the 1950’s consumer paradise
promoted by the advertising industry into a consumer hell. The protagonist of each novel feels
trapped, lonely, weary, and value-less, all feelings contrary to those depicted in contemporaneous
advertisements.
And—as well-to-do contributing members of society—the protagonists have access to all
the products promoted as fulfilling the American Dream. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano tells the
story of Paul Proteus, the highest ranking bureaucrat in Ilium, New York, his growing
dissatisfaction with the pecuniary system which he sees as dehumanizing, and his eventual
rebellion against the system. Similarly, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 depicts Guy Montag, a
respected “fireman” who also finds himself at odds with the system that’s supposed to provide a
comfortable life for all but, Montag feels, has anesthetized them instead. As well, Frederik Pohl
and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants uses Mitch Courtenay to communicate the same
dissatisfaction with the best material goods and services 1950s America has to offer.
All in all, the consumer goods owned by Proteus, Montag, and Courtenay may save them
time, work, and money, as promised by the aforementioned Firestone advertisement; however,
such savings do not lead them to the same enraptured state apparently being experienced by the
model in the advertisement.
Through their fictional representations of 1950s American culture, Player Piano,
Fahrenheit 451, and The Space Merchants draw on the pervasive advertising imagery of the time
as a foil against which to redefine their protagonists, the consumer goods which their
protagonists own, and—ultimately—consumer capitalism itself, and in so doing, their
representations of 1950s America become the opposite of what contemporaneous advertisements
depicted as the relationship between individuals and their products. Each protagonist, though—
at least superficially—physically comfortable in his life because of the creature comforts
available to him through the market, finds the dominant message of the culture that defines
human beings primarily as consumers deeply unsatisfying and struggles to find purpose and
significance for his life beyond the identity prescribed for him by his consumer culture.
Paul Proteus, Vonnegut’s character, has achieved the epitome of success according to the
market: a prestigious, high-paying job; a beautiful, doting wife who keeps up appearances of a
happy home life and promotes Proteus’ career ambitions; two cars; a nice house; all the newest
and best domestic appliances available; and social poise. Yet he has a nagging sense of
emptiness which his possessions cannot fill and a vague guilt that his success has come at the
expense of others. Bradbury’s Guy Montag, too, enjoys all the trappings of success according to
1950s consumer capitalism: he, too, has a prestigious position in society, a beautiful wife, and
all the amenities thought necessary for a comfortable life. Montag’s uneasiness begins primarily
because of a chance encounter with Clarisse, a young neighbor whose rejection of consumer
culture seems to have brought her joy, a joy even more apparent when contrasted with the sterile
existence of his wife, Mildred, whose obsession with watching television and overmedicating
herself has left her with little personality. Pohl and Kornbluth’s Mitch Courtenay arrives at his
dissatisfaction with consumer culture by a more circuitous route than does Proteus or Montag; in
spite of Courtenay’s fall from grace to a life of squalor, initially he has little sympathy for those
“consumers” whose life of poverty he shares for a brief time. As he encounters more and more
machinations of power embroiled in the consumer capitalistic enterprise, however, he assumes, if
reluctantly, his role as rebellion leader against that system.
Through the lives of their protagonists, Player Piano, Fahrenheit 451, and The Space
Merchants reflect the contemporary culture in which they were produced. All literary texts will
have some impinging on their time period, whether reflective of the manners of the time, the
values, the beliefs.
