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Super Sad True Love Story By Gary Shteyngart

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Imagine yourself sitting alone on a park bench, shoulders slumping dejectedly and hands at your temples covering your face. You have just lost your bag containing both your smartphone and your laptop. Luckily, you still have your wallet and keys in your pocket so you can go home. But you are still sitting on that park bench, processing the situation and wondering what to do. You don’t have back up and you won’t be able to arrange the money to buy another phone and laptop until the end of the week. How are you feeling right now? More importantly, do you think you can make it to the end of the week?

Increasing technological dependence is one of the central themes in Super Sad True Love Story and Shteyngart discusses this by introducing a device called an “äppärät”, that is arguably one of the central characters of the novel. Through this paper I wish to highlight how people in Shteyngart’s future are excessively reliant on technology, why I think that happens and what affect that has on society. In my opinion, the digital revolution is causing a change in human behaviors, experiences and thought processes. I believe that these changes are not necessarily for the better and have a negative effect on personality development.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart is an unlikely love-story between …show more content…
It is only possible to have these experiences when the buzzing distraction of the äppärät is removed. Lenny shares such a moment with Noah when they are talking about the day that the sun hits the avenues in a way that the whole city gets illuminated. Lenny writes, “He made it sound like an urban rapture, his aging face taking on a careful glow…his äppärät was at standby, he wasn’t streaming: This was real enough” (204). The contrast between this social encounter and all the others with Noah, when he is “emoting” or live streaming, is evidence of this

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