Article the Waste Makers

CRITIQUE ESSAY
A CRITIQUE OF THE WASTE MAKERS
1. Introduce the author and the piece (thesis statement of the article).

In The Waste Makers, Vance Packard, the author of numerous popular books on American consumer culture, attacks consumer "hedonism."

2. Summary. Clarify background and assumptions. Be objective here. You'll have plenty of time to jump on the author's ideas, if you so desire. For the time being, give a fair shake to the piece under question. This may take you a few paragraphs. You might even want to quote a few words to convey the tone of the piece in question.

Packard argues that Americans have come to view their purchases as ends in themselves. He decries the born-to-shop mentality that has come, he claims, to characterize American society since World War II. He is appalled by a housewife, with a "pert" nose, who buys a cherry pie at the supermarket rather than making it from scratch in her kitchen.

3. Write your own thesis.

Packard's essay is based on three somewhat dubious assumptions.

4. Develop your thesis in the body of your paper.

The first of those assumptions is that Americans were once "frugal" and "God-fearing people making sacrifices for the long haul." And that the reason they didn't "waste" their money is that they had character—and that we, corrupt moderns that we are, don't.

In fact, through the ages, people who have had money left over, after their basic needs have been taken care of, have always purchased those pleasing little things—red ribbons and other little geegaws—that they haven't absolutely needed. OurPuritan forefathers and foremothers would no doubt have spent more of their discretionary income onribbons and geegaws if they had had more discretionary income.-It's difficult to buy a new Sunday hat when you don't have the cash. Indeed, it's difficult to think of any affluent people in the past who haven't spent their discretionary income on baubles.

Packard also assumes that in recent decades especially, cynical advertisers have broken down our "puritanical inhibitions"—and thus set free our hedonism to feast on the cornucopia of unnecessary products that American manufacturing produces. It is true, as Packard says, that advertisers try to persuade us to untie our purse strings. Anyone who has felt the pangs of new-car lust knows that advertising can beseductive.

Advertising is seductive but we are not its helpless victims, as Packard would have it. Packard gives too much credit to the power of advertisers and too little credit to consumers. People are not unwilling pawns in the grip of advertisers. I like to think, even if Packard doesn't, that people have free will. We aren't pursuing the good life because advertisers have created a demand that wasn't there. We're pursuing the goodlife because, unlike our Puritan ancestors, we have the money to pursue it. It's as simple as that.

What, after all, would Packard have us do with our discretionary income? Stow it away in savings banks for the long haul? The fact is, most of us do plan for our retirement. Beyond that, we are only passing it on to our children and burdening them with the temptations of consumer hedonism.

Finally, Packard assumes, throughout his essay, that consumerism is somehow bad for the soul. Packard obviously agrees with the "elderly supermarket operator," who is appalled that his women customers buy convenience foods. Like the supermarket operator, Packard seems to assume that endless domestic drudgery is good for a woman's soul.

But there is nothing in the process of making a cherry pie from scratch that is conducive to virtue. In fact, one might argue that the woman who buys a cherry pie at the supermarket has more time to spend with her children, more time to read a book, more time to pursue a vocation. After all, over 50 percent of women are in the work force. Packard makes the rise of the feminist movement a little easier to understand.

5. State your conclusions or come back to your thesis in some way.

Like Emerson, Thoreau, and other American Romantics, Packard would have us return to life in a log cabin, reading the Bible by the flickering light of a whale-oil lamp. Packard seems to believe that our ancestors chose such a simple life. Actually, most were constrained by economic necessity. But most of us no longer live under that constraint.

In his hearty approval of the simple life, Packard is a modern-day Puritan who has that old fundamentalist suspicion that there's something wrong about personal pleasure.