An American Tragedy

Reading this book is like eating pre-chewed food. Every part -- every scene, character, motivation, action, expectation, or thought -- has been pre-masticated for your pleasure. Don't worry about analyzing the book, because Theodore Dreiser has already explained all the ramifications for you!

The plot follows Clyde Griffiths, a poor young man with lofty aspirations, as he tries to achieve success in the grinding capitalist machine of the United States prior to the Great Depression. When a rich girl falls in love with him, he thinks he finally has a chance -- if only he didn't have an inconveniently pregnant factory-girl insisting on immediate marriage. Unable to return to a life of futile deprivation, Clyde drowns his pregnant millstone. show more Unfortunately, he's an inept murderer, and it's not long before the police come knocking...

With that as the basic plot, it would be easy to construct a suspenseful, interesting story. Apparently, Dreiser thought differently. Or maybe he just thought, "Suspense? Tension? Dramatic escalation? Pah! I'm a social naturalist! I spit on your petty narrative tricks! I'm going to tell this story in the most boring way possible." show less

7.0/10

UNCLE!

While I am claiming a DNF on this round, I am still claiming my gold stars rating because I have already read it once. (As if once wasn't enough, she sighed.)

This book was really swell, boys and girls. Really it was. I mean, it was swingin'. It had all the home-grown-gee-whiz about it that everyone wants from the great american novel. Lots of dancin' and jivin' and rootin-toot-toot-tin' fun. Man, you really get to know your onions 'bout life in the bowery, guys and gals.

Well, that's my limit of 1920s slang. I mean, I could go on -- and on -- much as Dreiser does, but I ain't in the mood, ya know. And besides, I still want to have friends when I finally leave this behind.

I realized half way through this rich plum pudding of show more Americana, dense as it is, and dripping with Dreiser's peculiar brand of rum sauce, that Dreiser had a perfect (contemporaneous) counterpart in Cecil B. DeMille. In fact, I'd go out on a limb, dancin' and jivin' all the way, to say he was the literary DeMille. There is that same obsessive quality to overperform and overcomplicate; to over-describe and over-compensate. Dreiser doesn't see a room but he has to describe all the furniture in it, right down to the dust motes in the flea's eye.

Like DeMille, he has great stories to tell and is an absolute genius for detail, which is what make the stories rich and memorable. But where DeMille had a grand canvas and knew just when to pull back the camera, Dreiser continues drilling into the center of the mote.

He is able to capture the pathos of an entire generation with a simple, throw-away action like eyelashes fluttering for the wrong boy, at the wrong time; for within that innocuous flutter shared between the "wrong people" an entire life can come to ruin. He is a genius at depicting the unravelling, between the flutter and the fall -- and one would be hard pressed to find anyone who could do it better for it would be difficult indeed to find someone with such an exacting mind and formidable imagination.

He is unflagging in his pursuit for truth at all costs -- for he has moved, in this novel, far beyond the yawning gape holes of Sister Carrie -- and into a world where truth is the prime, and only, mover. Despite all costs, despite all pending tragedy, each character moves in a trajectory as if on a conveyor belt to ultimate damnation.

The true cost here, however, is wielded with a double-edged sword because while Dreiser sticks to the truth of a story, a character, he realizes there are as many truths as there are situations in a person's life; and the ultimate complication is that he tries to address each truth from different points of view. It -- truly -- redefines the meaning of omniscient narrator.

If only Dreiser had learned to pull back the camera a bit, like deMille, for the sake of the story, the tale would hang so much better. I can forgive Dreiser much, including his abominable style, his exhaustive descriptions, his tortured prose, but the final hiccup comes when I am bidden to understand everything for everyone without being given sufficient reason.

Still, I am very glad I read this -- at least once; and made a valiant attempt the second time 'round.

When one wades through the prose style of possibly the worst writer in history, there is much to like, and ponder, and empathize with what happens between the flutter and the fall. show less

Based on the real life criminal Chester Gillette, who was convicted of murdering Grace Brown in 1906, Dreiser’s Clyde Griffiths is a complex picture of the American dream gone wrong. There is perhaps no greater American novel that paints the portrait of one young man striving towards the wealth and glamour of the social class above him except The Great Gatsby.

Published in the 1920s, the main character Clyde did remind me a bit of Nick Caraway from The Great Gatsby. He's a complete outsider to the world of wealth, but unlike Nick he's completely enrapture by the opulence. He was raised by mild-mannered religious parents who eschewed any sort of fancy clothes or drinking. He is quickly seduced by a life of partying when he begins show more working as a bellhop in Kansas City.

Things spiral out of control for Clyde as he starts to value the high society life of his cousin above all else. He realizes that he'll do anything to get what they have no matter what the consequences are. That’s a gross simplification of a novel that is almost 1,000 pages long, but there’s so much more to the plot.

“The beauty of that world in which they moved. The luxury and charm as opposed to this of which he was a part. Dillard! Rita! Tush! They were really dead to him. He aspired to this other or nothing.”

SPOILERS
The book is split into three almost equal parts. The first introduces Clyde to the world of luxury and excess and all of its temptations. The second involves his rise in the social world and his relationship with both Roberta and Sondra. The third deals with the murder trial and his conviction. For a short time I thought maybe the first section wasn’t necessary, but it sets the stage for the rest of his life. It shows us why he values money and status. It builds a foundation for doing wrong and believing you can get away with it.

The way he sees women is shaped by his trip to the brothel and by his sister’s experience with becoming pregnant and being jilted. The car accident that ends in a little girl’s death teaches him that man slaughter might be ok as long as you can escape without consequences. The section with Roberta is where much of this unfolds, but the seeds were planted in the first section. As it unfolds you value the structure of the novel more and more.

As Clyde progresses down that path of selfishness it becomes harder and harder to sympathize with him. He takes no responsibility for his actions and seems completely surprised when he finds himself in one difficult situation after another. He never acknowledges the fact that his own actions and decisions lead to the situations. He falls in love with someone, seduces her, gets her pregnant and he then thinks that the universe trying to keep him from achieving greatness. He was strangely delusional at times and had an overwhelming sense of entitlement.

“For to say the truth, Clyde had a soul that was not destined to grow up. He lacked decidedly that mental clarity and inner directing application that in so many permits them to sort out from the facts and avenues of life the particular thing or things that make for their direct advancement.”

Honestly I wasn't sure that he ever loved Sondra. I think he loved what Sondra embodied; the lifestyle and wealth, but he never loved her. Instead of dealing with the situations he creates, all he wanted to do was escape. He wanted a perfect life with wealth and power and status, but he didn't want to have to work for any it.
SPOILERS OVER

American Tragedy at its core is the story of the dangers of pursuing the American dream with no moral code. We put such an emphasis on success and wealth in our country, that the “ends justify the means” mentality is so prevalent. But is it really worth it if you lose your soul in the process?

This story seems to be a common one in American literature. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Gatsby’s ambition, the awful outcome in “A Lesson Before Dying,” and of Richard Wright’s “Native Son” and his disastrous end. We seem to repeat this pattern of longing for something else and making horrible decisions attempting to reach our goal.

BOTTOM LINE: Although the moral message can be a bit heavy handed at times, this epic novel was unforgettable. The attention to detail, the large scope, the rise and fall of Clyde’s social standing, all of these elements meddled together to create a tragic picture of ambition and selfishness.

“There are moments when in connection with the sensitively imaginative or morbidly anachronistic . . . the mind [is] befuddled to the extent that for the time being, at least, unreason or disorder and mistaken or erroneous counsel would appear to hold against all else. In such instances the will and the courage confronted by some great difficulty which it can neither master nor endure, appears in some to recede in precipitate flight, leaving only panic and temporary unreason in its wake.”

“Titus Alden was one of that vast company of individuals who are born, pass through and die out of the world without ever quite getting any one thing straight. They appear, blunder, and end in a fog.” show less

Clyde Griffiths - trapped between worlds. Though flush with raw ability, his ambition is much greater than the station in life to which he was born. Clyde's sad life begins on the streets, helping his fundamentalist family attmept to spread their version of the gospel, busking hymns and homilies. He grows to hate what his family stands for as he watches the wealthy and the succesful walk by, condescending and aloof. Clyde, able to suppress his deisre for a life of money and fame and fortune no more, abandons his family and takes a job as a bellhop at a hotel that caters to the rich. His outside-in view of the upper class only reinforces his belief that, if he could match his talents to a class standing equal to his dreams, he would show more staisfy his every desire. Running with the fast crowd, exposing himself to every pleasure and vice, Clyde is eventually caught up in a terrible accident and, rather than face the consequences, he runs, exhibiting a weakness of will and moral fiber that will define the rest of his tragic life.

After a short exile into workaday life, Clyde lands on his feet again, connecting with an estranged uncle who is part of the social strata that he has always dreamed of accessing. Samuel Griffiths, the owner of a large shirt collar manufaturing plant, takes pity on Clyde and offers to give him a chance to work his way up in the company. Uncle Griffiths, though, is loathe to simply give Clyde the keys to the kingdom, worried that the boy's lack of education and meek social standing will reflect badly on his own family. So, Clyde is put to work in the company, his name offering him a taste of the treatment those born to wealth enjoy but he is never truly accepted by his uncle into the social class that matches their shared name. Clyde is again only able to view the world of money, favor, and ease from afar, invited to participate only as an amusement to some of the other young, rich family heirs.

Lonely and frustrated, Clyde turns to one of the pretty, female plant workers, Roberta Alden, for comfort and companionship. Trapped between the world he feels his name should place him in and the world his birth ties him to, Clyde refuses to engage in a normal and open relationship with Roberta, courting her in secret and eventually seducing her. When Roberta announces to him that she is pregnant and expects Clyde to marry her, he is faced with losing his tenuous foothold in the world of his family name. Clyde, frightened and desperate, kills Roberta, hoping to unbind himself from the shame and humiliation his connection to Roberta is sure to bring if exposed. Even in murder, though, Clyde is weak and unfocused, leaving a trail of evidence that easily identifies him as the killer.

Clyde is tried and convicted of the murder, judged by a group of simple, workaday people, primarily of the same social strata from which he so desperately tried to escape. His trial is a hearing not only on the crime but also on Clyde's empty ambition to achieve money and success and pleasure at any cost. His conviction is a comment on the unmoored desires of a society, eager for the life of entitlement without responsibility.

Dreiser's narrative is slow, detailed, and methodical. Though, every time the reader begins to grow impatient with the pastoral pace, Dreiser throws Clyde's life into chaos. Dreiser's plodding voice allows him to provide a complete and thorough review of Clyde's background and thought process in a way that is not typical of novels. By the time Clyde finally kills Roberta, his meandering thoughts and feelings have been examined to the point that the reader is almost as confused as Clyde himself about his murderous act. In the end, Dreiser's tempo and completeness are a positive, though they make the novel a bit long and difficult.

Another positive for Dreiser is his attention to detail and his ultra -realistic portrayal of both Clyde's crime and the investigation and prosecution that follows. Dreiser maintains an uncharacteristically good eye for the minutiae and subtlety of the crime investigation, interrogation, and the presentation of a case to a jury. Written in 1925, Dreiser's novel, though not your typical crime novel, is far ahead of its time. Modern crime writters would do well to read the last section of Dreiser's novel before they put pen to paper.

Some critics have claimed that Dreiser's novel was an attempt to convict the growing American consumer values and pleasure seeking without substance, focusing on Clyde's obssessive desires which are ultimately his undoing. While this explanation fits the novel, an alternate explanation is to see Clyde, his weak will and bankrupt moral sense, as the focus of Dreiser's disdain. The only difference in these explanations is who bears the ultimate responsibility for Clyde's make-up, society as whole or Clyde and his parents. I tend towards the later in viewing the book because it opens and closes with a scene describing Clyde's family in the midst of their religious mission. As you read about Clyde's parents and their Pharisaic piety, it seems equally empty as compared to the upper crust society toward which Clyde gravitates. Neither life or social strata ultimately has any value for Clyde and both contribute to his destruction.

Highly recommended!!!!
Four bones!!!! show less

Despite its length, this novel captures the attention from beginning to end. The impetuous, sometimes melodramatic, style keeps the reader turning the pages: good time entertainment to be sure! This book, however, is much more. While it could have easily been a soap opera by modern standards, Dreiser's messages on social struggles and discrepancies, religion and the justice system makes this novel a powerful critique which gives it its timelessness. I found that the entire trial was extremely modern in content and form, and I was actually surprised to see such an overt and compelling argument against the death penalty (maybe it's just my reading). This is definitely an example of pathos well rendered, an attempt at showing the emotions show more behind the bars as opposed to the judgement and righteousness of institutions.
Overall, I found that this book is still relevant both as a literary enjoyment and as a piece of social criticism for issues that are still on-going today. show less

It's easy to dismiss this novel as an antique curiosity, with its clunky, humorless prose and its turgid plot. Dreiser is the kind of author that tells you everything you need to know about his characters before they do anything. He breaks the primary rule of fiction writing by telling rather than showing. And he does so at length. In fact, he dwells on the occasional advancements in his plot for whole chapters, with the result that the novel repeats itself. Worse, he allows himself melodramatic forays into interior monologue, which lead to passages like, "But why? Why? Why?" Viewed by modern standards of reading, shaped in part by the Hemingway school of spare storytelling, Dreiser's work is at best primitive and, at worst, boring. In show more short, this is not a page-turner.

Still, buried inside this novel's critique of wealth and privilege and social inequity and organized religion is an ambiguity that belies Dreiser's tendency to tell rather than show. Clyde Griffiths's arrest for the murder of Roberta Alden at first seems to be the climax of the novel. But there are still dozens of chapters left. The lengthy descriptions of Clyde's trial and its aftermath feel like a case of beating a dead horse. But as I trudged on I forced myself to push past this reading. Instead, I found myself thinking about the title and the notion that there is something peculiarly American about the tragedy of Clyde Griffiths, whose ambition to escape his poor, religious upbringing is framed by his desire for nice clothes and a large house like the one his wealthy uncle inhabits in Lycurgus. Clyde spends the first half of the novel ignored, neglected or misunderstood. His tragic fate, at first, seems to be invisibility. But then he gains national attention (and inspires national disgust) when he is accused of murder. As perceived by the public that so swiftly condemns him, Clyde's tragedy is not merely his moral bankruptcy, but his brazen attempt to duck out of responsibility and obtain a social status he had no right to claim. By prolonging the agony of both Clyde and the reader in the novel's final chapters chapters, it seems to me that Dreiser begs the reader to consider tragedy and to draw his or her own conclusions about fate. show less

[Note: No, this will not be another of my stage-of-life crisis reviews.]

“An American Tragedy” justly deserves the designation of a classic. Not having read Dreiser previously (and being skeptical of American authors in general) I started the book with some trepidation. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Dreiser presents an astonishingly detailed account of a young man of ill fortune. We are given so much insight into the main character that one comes to feel that we actually know the person. Despite the character’s very troubling behaviors, the reader comes to understand and yes, reluctantly sympathize with his plight.

“An American Tragedy” lives up to its title in that it is not a cheerful or uplifting read. Many show more characters, both likable and not, are seen as frequently trapped by the circumstances of their lives. Yet, some characters no doubt evidence a form of nobility. These characters do their best to be true to themselves and their values through challenges beyond their control and ability to cope.

The book provided so much detail over an expanded period of time and circumstance that I came to see it almost as a screenplay for an extended media presentation. I do have some doubts about how popular this novel would be to a modern reader. I found it very enjoyable but the book and the story are long. How many readers are willing to invest the patience and persistence required to appreciate this great classic work? However, in my view, it is worth the investment. show less