In Jon by George Saunders, the omnipresent corporate establishment forces an identity upon the characters, causing tension between their true and artificial selves. The protagonist Jon exists in a commercial community that uses teenagers as test dummies for its brands. Their world is prefabricated and they are taught via commercials for different trademarks, with slogans as their source of knowledge. The very militant and impersonal nature of the society throws the reader off balance, yet the same principle notions of identity and status exist in our own contemporary society, though less exaggerated. The characters in Jon have artificial identities forced on them upon admittance to the TrendSetters community (a process that starts at birth),
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Saunders elaborates on the influence of media on today’s societies. For example, the kids in the Rustic village have blind allegiance and love towards the TrendSetters but they know not of their personal lives, just their “opinions” on the brands they deem as worthy. Further, he examines how media acts as a teaching module by promoting certain items or circulating certain stories, without giving the consumer another choice and making them believe that the opinions fed to them by the media are their own personal opinions. In our current society, this is represented by people wanting the “name brand” item, such as Hugo Boss shoes, over another item that may be of equal quality. We are driven to pay sky-high prices for a popular brand, although it may not necessarily be the best product on the market. This proves his point that today’s society is obsessed with fame and owning designer brand items. The question is, how much are we really like Jon and the other TrendSetters? Perhaps we need to open up our own eyes and escape the Coordinators that exist within our own lives. For example, certain marketable trends have already infiltrated my life. I say things like “google that” instead of “look that up” or “Xerox it” instead of “copy it”. Even branded items, such as “kleenex”, take the place of the generic word (in this case, “tissue”) in daily conversation. Marketing campaigns have saturated the living world so much that their marketing campaigns have successfully infiltrated our languages and thereby
Saunders elaborates on the influence of media on today’s societies. For example, the kids in the Rustic village have blind allegiance and love towards the TrendSetters but they know not of their personal lives, just their “opinions” on the brands they deem as worthy. Further, he examines how media acts as a teaching module by promoting certain items or circulating certain stories, without giving the consumer another choice and making them believe that the opinions fed to them by the media are their own personal opinions. In our current society, this is represented by people wanting the “name brand” item, such as Hugo Boss shoes, over another item that may be of equal quality. We are driven to pay sky-high prices for a popular brand, although it may not necessarily be the best product on the market. This proves his point that today’s society is obsessed with fame and owning designer brand items. The question is, how much are we really like Jon and the other TrendSetters? Perhaps we need to open up our own eyes and escape the Coordinators that exist within our own lives. For example, certain marketable trends have already infiltrated my life. I say things like “google that” instead of “look that up” or “Xerox it” instead of “copy it”. Even branded items, such as “kleenex”, take the place of the generic word (in this case, “tissue”) in daily conversation. Marketing campaigns have saturated the living world so much that their marketing campaigns have successfully infiltrated our languages and thereby