Analysis Of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story

With the continuous progressions in technology there are infinite ways in which our world can transform. In Gary Shteyngart's novel Super Sad True Love Story, protagonists Lenny and Eunice find themselves trying to pursue an unlikely relationship in a postmodern world where digital technologies have taken over daily lives. Lenny and Eunice’s heavy use of their äppäräti symbolizes our society moving towards a more technologically dependent one. The reliance on technology throughout the book closely parallels our society’s dependence on the media, and generates change in character development and level of interactions.

Lenny and Eunice’s heavy use of their äppäräts symbolize our society moving towards a more technology dependent one. In the

Throughout the novel, Eunice and her friends are constantly worried about keeping up to date in the fashion industry. During the trip to the UNRC, Eunice styles Lenny, choosing pieces that allow him to “[feel] and [act] like a thirty-nine-year old,” which in this dystopian setting means to act younger and superficial (211). Shteyngart converts present day United Nations into a giant retail plaza, mimicking the younger generations shopping culture. The obsession with keeping a youthful appearance is exaggerated throughout the story and is a top priority to the characters, showing what truly matters in this port modern world. The retail movement is simplified through the äppäräti and is easily accessible to the consumers. When the Global Teens Network crashes, Eunice “[opens] her äppärät and [concentrates] on the last shopping page stored in its memory,” demonstrating her dependence on the device and the prevalence of consumerism throughout her generation (277). She uses retail therapy as a way to cope with the fact that America is falling to a financial crisis, even though every network is down and nothing can be transmitted through them. During the crash, she acts as if shopping is going to fix the situation, not realizing the bigger problem is outside of their äppäräti. Her reliance and use of technology is a possible future that our society may

I believe that his depiction of the world is very plausible and should be something that we are aware of. In the essay Bad Credit, Annie McClanahan uses Super Sad True Love Story to prove her point that there is a direct relationship between credit score and personhood and consumerism throughout history. She claims the story “shows us how the credit score, the social person, and literary character remain entangled, even if the kinds of characters produced by and for the contemporary credit regime look very different from the credible types of an earlier period” (McClanahan, 34). Shteyngart creates his characters to portray different aspects of a futuristic society with Lenny being the older generation trying to fit in with the norm and Eunice, who tries to do everything she can to fit in physically with society but has deeper issues within. Although it may not seem like a negative portrayal of our society, the novel shows the extremes of today's use of technology. In my opinion, people should not base their whole interactions through technology and instead should turn to the “archaic” ways of communicating face to face. We are the consumers of the internet and choose to use the web to communicate, using the easy way out, instead of taking the time to physically meet people, so, we are the only ones to blame.