Delving into hyper-reality and consumerism in Convenience Store Woman

Abstract

In the contemporary world, humans act like mere parts of a machine that function to produce certain outcomes in life to give their life a meaning in the eyes of the society. This kind of lifestyle often causes detachment from one’s own emotion that leads to self-estrangement. They start to rationalize the meaning of life as if the world has become a huge life-size supermarket / convenience store from which humans shop their materialistic desires to maintain a status in the society. This thesis concentrates on the novel Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata to establish the idea that living in a hyper-real world creates isolation from self and blurs the line between ‘real’ and ‘constructed’ life. Therefore, this study observes the consumerist hyper-real society Keiko Furukura belongs to and explore the concepts of hyper-reality and consumerism with the help of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations and Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle as the theoretical lens. It concentrates on the novel being a postmodern read and plea for individuality amidst consumerism and hyper-reality.