As Bernard states, because it combines ‘freedom of access while stopped and hermetically sealed impenetrability while in motion’, the elevator cab is ripe for interpretation as a means through which to tell the story of the modern metropolis and its demographically diverse inhabitants. Inspired by the work of Andreas Bernard (author of Lifted, which focuses on literary and cinematic representations of elevators), I explore the contradictory aspects of this prominent yet overlooked type of human conveyance, looking at the fleeting personal exchanges that take place inside vertical lifts on Mad Men as well as on other television programs. Like Wilder’s classic comedy, Mad Men stages several interpersonal encounters inside the cramped spaces of elevator cars, which are private zones of physical and verbal intimacy as well as public areas where individuals from different social classes come together, if only momentarily. Set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising during the 1960s, a century after the earliest construction of vertical lifts in New York City, Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men illustrates how central the elevator has become to the urban spatial imaginary, perpetuated in part through such cultural productions as Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment (a source of inspiration for Weiner). My work uses the monomyth as a framework to show Neddy Merril’s expedition of Departure, Initiation and Return and his dealing with the knowledge and power that he has acquired on the journey as a failed quester. He returns home, not to the triumph and victory of a welcoming and grateful community but rather, to a dark, empty house, with the revelation that not only the beauty of the landscape has changed, but he himself has been expelled from the beneficent world, its comfortable surroundings and the social regulation that go with it. The protagonist Neddy Merril, considers himself as “a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with a destiny,” and is shown celebrating the beauty of his suburban world by swimming from his home to the other end of the pool, when all of a sudden he undergoes different changes in nature and climate. This essay pays special attention to the last chapter of the novel and discusses how the ending with Wilder’s crossing the expressway, Jack’s watching the sunset on the overpass, and the consumers’ confusion in the supermarket suggest that the frontiers start being recognized and bring disturbances to the non-places in White Noise.Īccording to Cortland Auser, Cheever “created an imaginative vital myth of time and modern man” that “uses the age old themes of quest, journey, initiation and discovery.” This paper specifically focuses on how Joseph Campbell’s monomyth pattern operates in relation to John Cheever’s short fiction The Swimmer. After learning about his impending death in the evacuation camp, another form of non-places, he awakens from illusion and ignorance and attempts to transgress the frontier between places and non-places. In the timeless, sealed-off world of Blacksmith, he believes that he is safe and protected from the Real, but he also sense its invisible presence. In non-places, his identity is something transitional whether it is a consumer or the head of the Hitler Studies, it is all a role-playing, which makes him anxious. In these places, Jack cannot have a real connection with his family but lives under an illusion that he does. This article discusses how some places that Jack frequently visits such as the shopping mall, the supermarket, his own automobile, and his home are portrayed as non-places. Marc Augé’s theory about non-places-functional places for transport, transit, commerce, and leisure-sheds a new light on the setting as an exclusively functional space filled with non-places. This essay investigates how the setting plays a crucial role in developing Jack Gladney as a character in White Noise and criticizing the “typical” landscape of American suburb.
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