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An enemy deep: spectacular addiction in Hubert Selby's "Requiem for a Dream".

According to Sadie Plant in Writing on Drugs, the "addict" as an identity emerged in the late nineteenth century as an outsider, a "figment[] of a modern imagination that needed to define its own normality, drawing the boundaries around the upright, productive, and reproductive members of twentieth-century society" (164). The addict, a "thing" for which desire existed without regulation, soon became mythologized in American society as a creature that voraciously consumed but offered little in return. As the nineteenth century concluded and the twentieth began, there was little the government could do to stop the influx of this monstrous consumer. In an attempt to halt the growing number of addicts, the American government enacted several laws and regulations; these only resulted in much larger, and certainly more insidious, threats emanating from within both official medical channels and the increasingly sophisticated underworld of "street" drugs. By the time World War II ended, and American prosperity was at an all-time high, the country was deeply entrenched in the first of many "Wars on Drugs," and addiction was no longer limited to repressed middleclass females- the "reproductive" members of nineteenth-century society- who were victims of iatrogenic practices. Instead, a new breed of addict was born in the postwar world. In the preface to the newest edition of Requiem for a Dream, which was released concomitantly with Darron Aronofsky's cinematic version in 2000, Hubert Selby writes that, while every individual has his or her own preconceived notion of the "American Dream," too many are afraid to pursue it, or to even recognize and accept its existence. Selby muses, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are most important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life1 is about giving, not getting, (vi) For Selby, the American Dream represents an archaic myth, one that may have been prevalent during the early years of America's foundation but has long since disappeared. This illusive- and elusive- dream nurtures the idea that, in order to be happy, we must first achieve success and money; however, this is, as Selby advocates, a false happiness. Requiem for a Dream deals with the consequences of following an illusion over truth, and as Aronofsky suggests, no human in the novel acts as the "hero." Instead, the novel "is a manifesto on Addiction's triumph over the Human Spirit," an enemy that lives "deep in the characters' heads" (Aronofsky 1). The commodities Selby's characters tie themselves to become their own worst enemies, and instead of salving their souls and allowing them to feel whole, addiction takes over so completely that they can only live for the next fix. In Requiem for a Dream, Selby introduces four characters, Harry Goldfarb, his mother Sara, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love, in order to show his hypothesis that "Life/ life" is about "giving, not getting." Each of the characters searches for their own version of the American Dream in different ways, and though the substances used are varied, the final desired feeling is the same: Harry, Sara, Marion, and Tyrone want to feel whole. For Harry and Tyrone, this means scoring a pound of pure heroin so they can be rich; however, the two end up using more than they sell. Harry eventually loses his arm from a gangrenous infection brought about by his heroin addiction, and Tyrone ends up on a chain gang in a Georgia prison. Marion prostitutes herself to feed her heroin addiction and not only loses Harry, but more importantly, her sense of self. Finally, Sara consumes both food and television in an effort to stave off loneliness but enters the dangerous world of amphetamine addiction instead, which leads her to develop schizophrenia and lands her in a mental institution. …