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octorow’s “Homer and Langley” that this novel “denounce excessive material culture in the context of egotistic, upper-class Manhattan dwelling at the end of the nineteenth century” (93) and alludes to the bad social atmosphere in contemporary America. As for social and psychological issues, Joyce Oates discusses that the personalities of victims like Homer and Langley are not well developed due to consumerism. Moreover, he also argues that Doctorow wants to use first-person narration to wake more people up on the issue of consumerism. Francesca Valdinoci points out that the characters of Homer and Langley provide a monument for the waste and such kind of works “rehabilitate the narration of these ‘wasted lives’ dominated by mental alienation.” (155) Different critics have analyzed the themes of the from their innovational perspectives. Although the achievements are fewer than other works, there are many trenchant perspectives.

Chapter II  Repression of Authorities: Mighty Political Landscape

2.1 Master of Ordinary People’s Fate: Landscape of Wars

As a creative and prolific novelist, E.L. Doctorow makes an experimental attempt to push the traditional boundary between history and novel to the limit in his works and then rethinks how history was constructed. Therefore, it is not surprising that some of his novels are set in many important wars in history. For example, The March is based on a pivotal campaign during the American Civil War and The Book of Daniel involves the story that happened during the Vietnam War. As a novel created by the author in his later period, the relevant narrations of significant wars also appeared in Homer and Langley.  

Don Mitchel claims that “landscape is also ideology.” (50) State power is a kind of ideology, and war is a typical performance of state power. Therefore, the landscape of wars is part of the landscape of state power. The majority of political conflicts in the 20th century are caused by wars between countries and alliances in the world. For the United States, the wars described in Homer and Langley by Doctorow belong to the fiercest political conflict at that time. In the novel, the landscapes of wars bring different influences on ordinary people. This part discusses the influence of the wars in the novel on the combatants and people who have never fought in the wars in Homer and Langley and attempt to find out that war is essentially the result of power struggles and that ordinary people are all victims of war. 

2.2 Spokesman of Authorities: Landscape of State Apparatuses

Political landscapes include landscapes of state power, landscapes as work, and landscapes as everyday practice. The implementation of state power can be carried out in two forms and in two state apparatuses: one is repressive state apparatuses, and another is ideological state apparatuses. (Meng 773) Repressive state apparatuses are government, administrative agencies, police, courts and prisons and etc. While ideological state apparatuses are education, law, religion, mass media, and other aspects related to culture. The landscape of state apparatuses belongs to a kind of landscape of state power.  Doctorow claimed that “Novelists have always written about intimacies, about personal relationships. Since in the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。