Written by Gary Shteyngart, Super, Sad, and True Love Story is a fictional novel describing the vicissitudes of two lovebirds, Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park. Both are a generation of American immigrants during its political turmoil with unstable economy. However, the only means of communication is through electronics like instant emails or electronic journals.
Although it is an imaginary story, the current society is facing the reality of the story in different ways. The use of social sites like tweeter, facebook, to go, and meebo have both negative and positive impacts on relationships whether in family, school, or at work.
Lenny is a Russian immigrant while Eunice is a Korean immigrant. The two fall in love at the time when America is under political instability with a poor socio-economic status. On the hand, each of them comes from strict families, which influences them to have low self-esteem and always feel insecure.
Eunice accepts Lenny and even moves in with him in order to seek love. Although the love is fragile due to poor communication, they endure all and start loving each other. Eunice accepts to cohabit with Lenny but the only means of communication is through switching between instant messages and electronic journals. The two hardly see each other because Lenny’s job takes much of his time. Unfortunately, the political upheaval in America catches up with them straining their relationship.
The story is realistic and portrays America’s future as being under the influence of electronics and frequent political turmoil (Kakutani 8). For instance, in the relationship between Lenny and Eunice the only means of communication between them is through electronics devices like apparati; email messages or letters and journals (Shteyngart 4).
Therefore, their relationship is not stable due to lack of face-to-face communication. Due to poor communication, Eunice hardly sees Lenny, which makes her to think that he dislikes her. There is no romantic and close relationship between them. Additionally, there is little or no face-to-face communication between people in America rather there is the use of texts and images.
Likewise, in the current society the emergence of electronic gadgets like computers, cell phones, and television is the cause of poor communication between people. For instance, most relationships whether family or romantic are accomplished using cell phones (Williams and Edge 5).
This leads to too many divorce cases and break up of family ties. This is similar to the relationship of Eunice and Lenny where communication is through messages and journals hence making it to be unstable. Additionally, the current employment system is by computers (emailing system) and cell phone.
Therefore, most employers do not know much about their employee leading to poor work relationship and eventual unemployment. Most employers keep the curriculum vitae in computer databases; therefore, anybody can access personal information and leak it. Likewise, in the story, the leakage of Aiden M personal information to the public interferes with his job.
The story highlights poor communication methods due to influence of technology in a poor socio-economic society. Due to poor communication Eunice view her father as oppressive and decides to look for love from somewhere else. Unfortunately, she ventures in a relationship where the only means of communication is through electronic journals and email messages.
Unluckily, when there is political instability in New York they go separate ways and due to lack of proper communication, their relationship is on the verge of breaking. In summary, the author brings out the negative impacts of information technology in family relationships and ties.
Works Cited
Kakutani, Michiko. Love Found Amid Ruins of Empire. New York: New York press, 2010.
Williams, Robin, and Edge, David. What is the social shaping technology? Research policy. London: Longmans Publishers, 1996. Print
Shteyngart, Gary. Super Sad, True, Love Story. US: Random house, 2010.