【正文】 environment in the text to a point of excess, such as the restaurants, department stores and theaters, etc., highlighting its influence on individuals and families. First, Drouet, the most special character of the novel, is a pleasureseeking traveling salesman. He is a vulnerable prey to his internal material and sexual desires: pleasure and women are his chief life goal. Drouet, in effect, functions as a vivid advertisement of consumer desire in the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Drouet39。t to be lonely,”said Lola, thinking of Carrie39。t go with Anybody.” “I don39。s what39。t you? ” “No,” said Lola, “not very often. You won39。t know,” she said to Lola one day, sitting at one of the windows which looked down into Broadway, “ I get lonely。?in her rocking chair savoring spiritual loneliness after she realized her dream. Culture is a kind of social phenomenon, as well as a kind of historical phenomenon. Consumer culture consists of the consuming habit, the consuming concept, the consuming value and the consuming patterns which are revealed from people?s consumption activities in a certain stage of history. It is much influenced by many things, such as the political system, economic system, the development of economy, people?s values, customs, and the overall quality of residents, etc. At the turn of the 20th century, America shifted from“a productive society” to ??a consumer 5 society”. The satisfaction of material needs prompted people?s consumption consciousness. Consumption and possession of material based on hedonism were prevalent at that time, which meant a challenge to traditional moral standard “diligent and thrifty”. People?s possession of material symbolizes the identity and status. Carrie is convinced by consumer culture publicized by Drouet, then an inevitable tragedy is doomed. 2. Consumption Desire Stimulated by the Needs of Society Carrie is attracted by dazzling goods for the first time she es to a department store. “ Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new and pleasing in apparel for women.” 4 All these exquisite things are luring her so that she can not help being wildly jealous. She realizes in a dim way how much the city heldwealth, fashion, easeevery adornment for women, and she longs for dress and beauty with a whole heart. “ but she noticed too, with a touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her, brushing past in utter disregard of her presence,” “and wherever she encountered the eye of one it was only to recognise in it a keen analysis of her own positionher individual shortings of dress and that shadow of manner which she thought must hang about her and make clear to all who and what she was.”5 These sentences indicate that the experience in the department store for the first time casts shadow on her heart afterwards. The contempt of rich women as well as shop girls stimulates her pure heart deeply. As she loses her job, she meet Drouet again, her desire has been ignited by the dinner he treats her, the new clothes he brings for her, and his promise to buy a car for her, thus she believes that Drouet can give her all things she has always dreamed of: Now the mystic scenery merged queerly and the place was by waters she had never seen. They were upon some board or ground or something that reached far out, and at the end of this was Carrie. They looked about, and now the thing was sinking, and Minnie heard the low sip of the 6 encroaching water. “Come on, Carrie,” she called, but Carrie was reaching farther out. She seemed to recede, and now it was difficult to call to her. “Carrie,”she called, “Carrie,”but her own voice sounded far away, and the strange waters were blurring everything. She came away suffering as though she had lost something. She was more inexpressibly sad than she had ever been in life.” 6 From above we can see that, Carrie?s consumption consciousness is regarded as the corruption of moral by her sister and her brotherinlaw. At the beginning of the 20th century, American society had greatly changed in its social culture and values by being prompted in the course of addition, people living in big cities had more plicated needs than those living in countrysides. Therefore, there is no doubt that people?s consumption desire can be stimulated by the needs of society. The whole novel describes many twists through the whole life of Carrie: from a female worker in a shoe factory to a fashion lady, from someone?s mistress to a famous star. The gradually expanding desire brings her different mentalities also different fates. Her fate ends up with a declining and illusory situation at last. 3. Disillusionment Brought by Consumption In the last chapter of the novel, Mr. Hurstwood mittees suicide in a cheap hotel, and Carrie sits in a rocking chair, looking out the window and dreaming about more luxurious goods. At the end of the whole novel, Dreiser wrote: Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o39。s flat, she finds it is not as good as she39。?in her rocking chair. Thus a tide of review and revaluation of Sister Carrie is promoted again by critics home and abroad. Sherwood Anderson wrote in his Dreiser that “The feet of Dreiser are making a path for us”and“They are tramping through the wildness making a path.” 1 However, for his opponents, Dreiser was more an agent of regression than a pathfinder because of his depiction of the triumph of man?s??animal??nature over his capacity for reason a