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Theodore Dreiser'S 'An American Tragedy': A Study

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Theodore Dreiser'S 'An American Tragedy': A Study

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Content Copyright ( c ^ by
Marjory Peterson Dustman
1965
THEODORE DREISER'S AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
A STUDY
by
Marjory Peterson Dustman
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
January 1965
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA
TH E GRA DUATE SC H O O L
U N IV ER SITY PARK
LO S A N G ELES. C A L IFO R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
...........Ma£j.Qi:y.P.£t&i:80A.JQu£.tm.an....
under the direction of h§.?.....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
.......
Dean
Date J a n u a r y , 19.6.5.
DISSERTATION COM M ITTEE
..
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE DREISER CRITICISM................. 1
II. STRUCTURE.............................. 30
Charts: Significant Differences Between
Source and N o v e l ......... 43
Sequence and Time of Episodes . . . 72
III. DREISER AS LITERARY ARTIST: VIEWPOINT .... 77
IV. DETAIL AND DIALOGUE................... 108
V. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS ......................... 130
VI. PHILOSOPHIC IMPLICATIONS ..................... 147
VII. CLYDE AS A TRAGIC FIGURE............... 130
CONCLUSION........................................... 197
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 200
CHAPTER I
THE DREISER CRITICISM
An American Tragedy was published' in 1925, when its
author, Theodore Dreiser, was fifty-four years old. While
the youthfulness of the central figure and the rough texture
of the novel suggest it might be the work of a promising be
ginner, it was actually Dreiser's sixth novel. Although
during the ten years since his fifth novel, Dreiser had pub
lished short stories, plays, and sketches, An American-Trag
edy attracted attention as a fresh view of this established
but controversial writer.
While the controversy over Dreiser has shifted ground
somewhat during the past four decades, Dreiser remains today
a figure of'a curious prestige. His faults have been damned
as loudly as his power has been praised. While his works
have had much attention, they have been given little close
study. Among his novels, even the most solidly popular, An
American Tragedy, has been more frequently subjected to
facile generalizations than to critical analysis. This
study will present an interpretation of the novel and an
examination of the technical and artistic means by which
Dreiser turns a murder case into a moving, dateless story.
1
The Influence of Dreiser's Early Critics
The criticism of Dreiser's works may be too biased, too
inaccurate, too contradictory, or too superficial to aid the
modern reader of An American Tragedy. Maxwell Geismar, who
calls Dreiser "the most distinguished member of the whole
group of modern novelists," asserts that perhaps more than
most, "Dreiser's novels have been obscured by a fog of errors
and misconceptions.The confusion is not surprising, since
the work of Dreiser presents a number of difficulties, which,
while not uncommon singly, together create critical chaos.
To begin with, the sheer length of An American Tragedy,
2
874 pages, makes it difficult to view the work as a whole;
in addition, in its thousands of lines a critic can find a
crumb of support for almost any preconceived theory. Drei
ser's pioneering for frankness in literature also confuses
the criticism, prompting attacks by moralists answered by the
praise (and over-praise) of liberals. Then the quantity of
3
Dreiser's work, five novels, numerous short stories, a half-
dozen short plays and one full-length tragedy, and thousands
^American Moderns From Rebellion to Conformity (New
York, 1958), p. 50.
2
In the edition of the World Publishing Company (Cleve
land, 1948). All references are to this edition.
^Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Fin
ancier (1912), The Titan (1914X and The "Genius" (1915).
of lines of newsprint, encourages reading into An American
Tracredv ideas and techniques found in his earlier writing.
Dreiser has revealed his personal life so frankly in four
4
volumes of autobiography that critics often are side-tracked
into searching for biographical details in his novels, or
into attacking the writer himself. And finally, the mixed
quality of Dreiser's writing, with its lapses and blunders
in style and technique and its contradictions in philosophy,
makes a valid and final estimate difficult.
The genteel protectors of public morality and literary
taste plagued Dreiser from the start of his career in fic
tion with the suppression of Sister Carrie, apparently at the
request of the publisher's indignant wife. Modern readers
who find the novel hardly shocking and wonder at the struggle
over its publication need only look at the popular novels of
the early 1900's to understand why Dreiser did not win imme
diate popular approval. Even the titles betray the senti
mentality of these novels:
Jennie Gerhardt (1911) was neglected in favor of Molly
Make-Believe. The Financier (1912) had to compete with
The Melting of Molly. . . . The Titan (1914) could not
hope to rival The Eyes of the World and Pollygna, which
were ironically the best sellers of the year.
4
A Traveller at Forty (1913) , A Hoosier Holiday (1916),
A Book About Myself (1922) , reissued as Newspaper Days (1931),
and Dawn (1931).
5
Harlan Hatcher, Creating the Modern American Novel
(New York, 1935), p. 31.
In 1915, Stuart Sherman sturdily presented the genteel
charges against Dreiser. Of his first five novels, Sherman
said, "I do not find any moral value in them, nor any memo-
£
rable beauty." He accused Dreiser of "eliminating distinc
tively human motives and making animal instincts the supreme
factor in human life" (p. 649). Sherman’s criticism reveals
the ad hominem attack which often mars the Dreiser criti
cism: he labeled Dreiser's books as representative of "that
'ethnic' element of our mixed population" (p. 648), and sug
gested that Dreiser may have adopted the jungle-motive be
cause he came from Indiana (p. 649).
i
Later critics have followed Sherman's lead, and too
often with his sneer. Robert Shafer begins, "Fortunately
Mr. Dreiser has written much about himself," and then makes
much of Dreiser's youthful weaknesses: "a stupid boy and
young man, lapped in vague reverie and hazy dreams of enjoy-
7
ment." Clifton Fadiman asserts that Dreiser’s early experi
ences stunted his artistic development:
At an early age he met the raw realities— poverty, birth,
death, sex. They were to abide with him through his life
time and by obsessing him, obscure from him the subtleties
of human character.8
g
"The Naturalism of Mr. Dreiser," Nation, Cl (December
2, 1915), 648.
7
"An American Tragedy," m Humanism and America, ed.
Norman Foerster (New York, 1930), pp. 149-150.
g
"Dreiser and the American Dream," Nation, CXXXV (Octo
ber 19, 1932), 364.
Thomas Whipple also echoes Sherman's attack on Dreiser's
lack of genteel culture:
Surely he could not write as he does if there were not in
his mind something correspondingly muddled, commonplace,
undiscerning, cheap, and shoddy.^
While Sherman's criticisms may have been fair to at
least parts of the earlier novels, they furnished unfortu
nate preconceptions for the readers of An American Tragedy
ten years later. According to Isidor Schneider, who worked
for Dreiser's publisher, "Dreiser was then pretty generally
considered a pornographer. " In 1926 C. R. Walker reports,
*
Ten years ago when Dreiser's last novel "The Genius" ap
peared, Comstockians and professors stood together ready
to jump with a snarl at his throat. And did. . . . Surely
no author alive has encountered more dragons and hobgoblins
and moral poison gas on his way from obscurity to compara
tive acceptance.!*
The popularity of the realistic novel, however, was
12
growing with a new generation of readers, especially after
9
Spokesmen: Modern Writers and American Life (New
York,-1928), p. 72.
■^"Theodore Dreiser," Saturday Review of Literature, X
(March 10, 1934), 533.
"How Big is Dreiser?" Bookman. LXIII (April 1926),
146.
12
The influence of the old generation is not dead, how
ever. Here is the sole mention of Dreiser in the encyclo
pedia on which I was brought up: "Theodore Dreiser, of Terre
Haute, Indiana, where he was born in 1871, is the author of
a number of well-written but rather unpleasant novels about
rather unpleasant people, and it is a question whether many
people will care for them after he ceases to write" (The
Book of Knowledge, XIV [New York, 1943], 5012) .
6
the furor over Main Street in 1920 (Hatcher, p. 32). Thus An
American Tragedy found an audience. It sold more copies
than any of Dreiser's other works, and has been dramatized
13
four times. The reviews still show the distaste that had
so often greeted Dreiser, however. The Boston Evening Tran
script (the novel was later banned in Boston) reported it to
be a "commonplace story not alleviated in the slightest de-
14
gree by any glimmer of imaginative insight." Henry Seidel
Canby described it as
a work occasionally poignant, occasionally intense in its
realism, often deadly dull, usually a monotonous narrative
of everything that happened in the course of Clyde Grif
fiths' short, worthless, and almost meaningless life.15
Others were less severe, however. The New York Times
said that while it was not fireside reading, it was worthy
of attention "as a portrayal of one of the darker phases of
16
the American character," and the New York World called it
"a sound and vigorous achievement in pushing out the bound-
13
By Patrick Kearney in 1926, and by Erwin Piscator and
Lena Goldschmidt ("The Case of Clyde Griffiths"); movie ver
sions in 1931, and in 1951 ("A Place in the Sun," directed
by Elia Kazin). See Max J. Herzberg, ed., The Reader1s En
cyclopedia of American Literature (New York, 1962), p. 28.
14
E. G. Edgett (rev. of An American Tragedy), January 9,
1926, p. 31.
15
"An American Tragedy," Saturday Review of Literature,
II (February 20, 1926), 569.
16
R. L. Duffus (rev. of An American Tragedy), Janu
ary 10, 1926, p. 1.
17
anes of thought. " Even Sherman, reversing his earlier
strictures against Dreiser, called An American Tragedy a
"massive achievement":
I do not know where else in American fiction one can find
the situation here presented dealt with so fearlessly, so
intelligently, so exhaustively, so veraciously, and there
fore, with such unexceptionable moral effect.18
Dreiser actually suffered from prudery and from praise,
both of which pushed him into the mold of crusader for artis
tic freedom. In praising the new novel, Sherman warned that
Dreiser, now accepted, would be shelved as "the grand old
man of realism" (Main Stream, p. 134). And so it was.
Whipple in 1928 saw Dreiser's importance as "chiefly histor
ical" (p. 70), as "social historian," "portrayer, critic and
product of American society" (p. 82). Even Sinclair Lewis,
in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech of 1930, treated Dreiser
not as an artist, but as a crusader, as he paid tribute not
to Dreiser's works, but to his leadership in the revolt of
American letters against Victorian prudery:
. . . Dreiser, more than any other man, marching alone,
usually unappreciated, often hated, has cleared the trail,
from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in
American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of
life. Without his pioneering, I doubt if any of us could,
unless we liked to be sent to jail, express life and
1 7
J. W. Crawford (rev. of An American Tragedy), Janu
ary 10, 1926, p. 6.
I Q
The Main Stream (New York, 1927), p. 144. Dreiser
probably would have preferred to remain a barbarian rather
than be made into a moralist on Sherman's terms.
19
beauty and terror.
While Dreiser's novels and stories helped to broaden
20
the acceptable subject matter for American literature, it
is doubtful that Dreiser was consciously revolting against
current literary styles. He simply wrote of life as he saw
it, and in his essays and letters he defended his right to
do so. In the Foreword to Sister Carrie he explains, "My
own reactions to life were so diametrically opposed to the
21
fiction of that time." Nothing in his works comes near
the deliberate sordidness of Maggie; A Girl of the Streets
or McTeague. Unlike Norris, Crane, and Garland, he did not
consciously write to a formula. His revolt was apparently
unconscious, a result of his sensitivity to life as he saw
it.
Dreiser's Naturalism
Today, the battleground for literary freedom having
shifted to new "tropics," a closer look at Dreiser's histor
ical position and especially his relationship to naturalism
is needed. To begin with, Dreiser is not a naturalist in
19 ' ■ *
As quoted m Malcolm Cowley, ed., After the Genteel
Tradition (New York, 1937), p. 14.
20
Dorothy Dudley's somewhat over-enthusiastic biography
Dreiser and the Land of the Free (New York, 1946), presents
the details of this phase of Dreiser's career. Another
early champion of Dreiser is H. L. Mencken. See A Book of
Prefaces (New York, 1918), pp. 67-148.
21
(New York: Modern Library, 1932), p. v. All refer
ences are to this edition.
9
the sense that Zola and Norris are. Naturalism in their
novels meant realism, objectivity, and pessimistic deter
minism; their emphasis was on the physical, the sordid, and
the violent. Norris complains that Realism is a "harsh,
22
loveless, colourless, blunt tool," because it confined it
self to "normal life." He much prefers Romance, which "may
even treat of the sordid, the unlovely— as for instance, the
novels of M. Zola" (p. 215). He cautions that Romance may
call "from the squalour of a dive, or the awful degradation
of a disorderly house" (p. 219). What he speaks of as "ro
mance, " however, would include what is more commonly called
naturalism.
Dreiser obviously shares the naturalists' aim to open
to view through realistic detail any aspect of man's experi
ence. Like the naturalists he wrote of the middle and lower
classes and of every-day events, not excluding aspects of
sexual behavior not common in American novels before 1890.
In both Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt he treats (without
censure) the sexual liaisons of an unmarried girl with more
than one man. Like Norris and Zola, he draws men to whom
sexual encounters outside marriage appear necessary and
natural; Drouet, Kand, Witla, and Cowperwood. Like Zola he
often bases his novels on events from life, founded on pain-
22
The Responsibilities of the Novelist (New York, 1903),
p. 214.
10
staking research: The Financier and The Titan on the life
of Charles T. Yerkes, The "Genius" on Everett Shimm, parts
of Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt on his own family, and
An American Tragedy on a famous murder case of 1906.
The appearance of factuality in his novels has misled
his supporters and critics alike. H. L. Mencken praises
Book II of An American Tragedy because there Dreiser "becomes
23
again the adept and persuasive reporter"; Mencken proudly
(but erroneously) announces, "It was seldom that he departed
from what he understood to be the record" (p. 7). Other
critics have similarly over-stressed Dreiser's use of real
istic detail, not always with approval: Floyd Stovall called
24
him an "indifferent" reporter; Fred L. Pattee sums up his
chapter on Dreiser by calling him, "a reporter of mere fact,
25
a photographer rather than a painter"; Oscar Cargill charg
es that Dreiser wrote "compilations," and had "lifted verba-
2 6
tim" parts of An American Tragedy.
23
Introduction, An American Tragedy (Cleveland, 1948),
p. 11. Elsewhere Mencken is more discerning: "His aim is
not merely to record, but to translate and understand; the
thing he exposes is not the empty event and act, but the
endless mystery out of which it springs" (Prefaces, p. 136).
24
American Idealism (Norman, Oklahoma, 1943), p. 133.
25
The New American Literature (New York, 1930), p. 192.
^ Intellectual America (New York, 1959), p. 111. The
disagreement of Dreiser's critics on even the degree of his
verisimilitude is shown by contrasting the above judgments
with the following: Dreiser shows "a false picture, resem
bling life about as much as a wilderness of linoleum would
11
The question of Dreiser's naturalism is further compli
cated by the differences among his works; The Financier, The
Titan and The "Genius" are decidedly more naturalistic than
the others, in technique and emphasis. Unlike Sister Carrie
and An American Tragedy, these novels are almost entirely
exhibitions of events with little analysis of character;
they abound in animal imagery, including the symbolic battle
27
of the squid and the lobster, and the description of the
unfairly favored Black Grouper fish (The Financier, pp. 501-
502); they contain scenes of violence and sordid detail,
28
e.g., Aileen's clawing of her rival, or Angela's fatal
29
post-partum surgery m The "Genius".
In addition, the plays he wrote immediately preceding
An American Tragedy were so pessimistic and naturalistic in
their stress on^animality and abnormality as to offend even
his staunch supporter Mencken. Dreiser's The Hand of the
resemble the land of all the living flowers" (G. K. Chester
ton, "The Skeptic as a Critic," Forum, LXXXI [February 1929],
67). "It seems a strange use of the world 'realistic' to
apply it to this stupendous objectification of the phantas
mal life-dreams of so many tin-tack automatons of a bastard
modernity" (John C. Powys, "An American Tragedy," Dial, LXXX
[April 1926], 334).
27
The Financier (Cleveland: The World Publishing Com
pany, 1946), pp. 3-6. All references are to this edition.
28
The Titan (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company,
1946), pp. 148-152. All references are to this edition.
29
(Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1946),
p. 179. All references are to this edition.
12
Potter, the one full-length play, features a hero whose un
controllable attraction for young girls causes him to attack
and then murder a child of eleven. The sexual appetite is
primarily animalistic in Cowperwood and Witla, their frequent
instinctive passions the natural result of the virile man's
response to female beauty. Dreiser himself supplies the
label, "preliminary sex affairs" (The Titan, p. 170). In
contrast, in Sister Carrie. Jennie Gerhardt, and An American
Tragedy, the sexual relationships, while not conventional,
nevertheless are drawn in shades of refinement, with varia
tions in tone and significance, and are touched by moral and
aesthetic considerations. In addition to the stress on ani-
mality, like the naturalists Dreiser leans heavily toward
determinism; in all of his novels characters are often
pushed toward tragedy by circumstances or drawn by their own
overwhelming desires.
To place Sister Carrie beside Nana or McTeaque, how
ever, will quickly reveal significant differences between
Dreiser and the naturalists. Sister Carrie lacks the scenes
of brutality, sordidness, and eroticism found in the other
novels. Carrie is a sensitive human being, not an unthink
ing sensual creature. Dreiser does not present merely a
series of events as do Norris and Zola, but reveals Carrie's
30
Dreiser's deterministic philosophy is discussed
below, pp. 147-168.
13
inner life, her thoughts, uncertainties and perceptions as
she grows from an innocent, yearning country girl who dreams
of simple material pleasures to a successful actress who
longs for serious dramatic roles to satisfy her unfulfilled
spiritual and aesthetic senses.
While naturalistic novels were already well known in
Europe and America before Dreiser began writing, his novels
are not naturalistic shockers, despite their vehement and
uncompromising realism. And apparently Dreiser did not in
tend them to be, for of Sister Carrie he says, "I simply
31
want to tell about life as it is." Malcolm Cowley ex
plains how the novel differs in tone from those of the natu
ralists :
Sister Carrie had the appearance of being a naturalistic
novel and would be used as a model for the work of lrter
naturalists. Yet it was, in a sense, naturalistic by de
fault, naturalistic because Dreiser was writing about the
life he knew best in the only style he had learned. There
is a personal and compulsive quality in the novel that is
not at all naturalistic. The book is felt rather than ob
served from the outside like McTeaque; and it is based on
dreams rather than documents. Where McTeaque had been a
conducted tour of the depths, Sister Carrie was a cry from
the depths, as if McTeague had uttered it.32
For all his interest in realistic details, Dreiser has
much more in mind. Floyd Dell says:
31
(Anon.interview) New York Times, January 15, 1901;
reprinted in Alfred Kazin and Charles Shapiro, eds., The
Stature of Theodore Dreiser (Bloomington, Indiana, 1955),
p. 59.
32
"The Slow Triumph of Sister Carrie," New Republic,
CXVI (June 23, 1947), 24.
14
I found that he did not agree with those critics who
praised him for the immense amount of bricks and mortar
that were visible in his towering structure of fiction—
the multiplicity of details which such critics called
'realism.' He was not especially interested in the de
tails but was using them, and perhaps over-using them,
earnestly in trying to achieve beauty. He once told me
with honest tears in his eyes that a novel had no excuse
for existence unless it was beautiful. And by beautiful
I knew that he meant true to the deep emotions of the
human heart, not to the mere visible surface aspects of
life.33
Dreiser reveals that he sees much more than the surface, as
he speaks of the life of the big city:
If there are all the chain cigar stores, chain drug
stores, haberdasheries, movie theatres, and big hotels in
Manhattan to describe, here are also Hell, Heaven, and
Purgatory of the soul.34
Henry James's astute criticism of the naturalists, that
they were good painters but poor analysts, applies to some
of Dreiser's work, but not to Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt.
of An American Tragedy, where he explores the purgatory of
the soul through revelation of motive and character. Indeed,
although Matthiessen writes that either Dreiser or James may
be described by saying that "he was everything the other was
not" (p. 56), Dreiser comes closer to the tradition of James
than to the naturalists; in An American Tragedy he focuses
on the characters' perception of events rather than on the
events themselves. Although surely Dreiser's analysis lacks
33
Homecoming (New York, 1933), p. 268.
34
As quoted by F. 0. Matthiessen, Theodore Dreiser
(Scranton, 1951), p. 189.
15
James's subtlety, yet when Dreiser muddies the waters, one
feels their turbulent depths, depths which are not suggested
by Norris and Zola.
The typical scene in An American Tragedy reveals a dif
ferent emphasis from that of the naturalists. According to
Frederick J. Hoffman:
The naturalist writer found it possible to present an il
lusion of great tension which, when examined closely, is
actually achieved only through external action, physical
contact— or at best, through loud and strenuous rhetor
ic . 35
Such scenes abound in Crane's Maggie and Norris's McTeague.
Yet Dreiser's most memorable and poignant scenes are almost
still portraits, where the quiet pose of the central figure
contrasts painfully with his raging thought and emotions,
and testifies mutely to his helplessness, for example, Ro
berta at her farm home reading of Clyde's glamorous social
life (pp. 380-381)r Clyde sitting, head in hands, on his
bunk the first night in the death house (pp. 812-815);
McMillan leaning against a tree after Clyde's execution,
numb with horror and doubt (p. 871). In An American Tragedy
the tension springs largely from psychological, not physical
action .
Dreiser's method also differs from that of the natu
ralists, with their intention of being the objective report
ers of life. Despite his apparent reliance on actual ex-
35
The Modern Novel in America: 1900-1950 (Chicago,
1951), p. 34.
perience, and extensive research, Dreiser departed greatly
from the facts as they had occurred in life. His method was
more imaginative than reportorial, and frequent authorial
comments witness to his lack of objectivity. Of his writing
of Sister Carrie he says,
My mind was blank except for the name. I had no idea who
or what she was to be. I have often thought that there
was something mystic about it, as if I were being used,
like a medium. (As quoted by Matthiessen, p. 55.)
Although Dreiser got permission to enter Sing-Sing while he
was writing An American Tragedy, he was disappointed with
his observations there, and wrote to Mencken (December 3,
1925), "And as for myself— my imagination was better— (more
q c .
true to the facts)— than what I saw.
Unfortunately many modern studies of the novel, as well
as current literary histories apparently fail to recognize
that qualifications must be made before Dreiser is classed
as a naturalist, especially in relation to An American Trag
edy. Hoffman calls it a "naturalistic tour de force" (Modern
Novel, p. 51), and Randall Stewart says it is "probably the
37
most completely naturalistic of all American novels." *
Norman Foerster asserts that Dreiser's "grim, depressing
naturalism may best be seen in An American Tragedy, a heavily
3 6
Letters of Theodore Dreiser, II, Robert H. Elias,
ed., (Philadelphia, 1959), 437.
37
American Literature and Christian Doctrine (Baton
Rouge, 1958), p. 114.
17
38
documented novel reminiscent of Zola." A Literary History
of the United States unjustly reports that Dreiser was the
first American wholly devoted to "the philosophy, the mate-
39
rial, and the method of Zola." R. W. B. Lewis charges
40
that Dreiser seems to be translating Zola into American,
and Pelham Edgar finds Dreiser and Zola "sufficiently iden-
41
tical" to justify his using three and a half pages of
another critic's comments on Zola to describe Dreiser
(pp. 245-248). Cargill (p. 107), Stovall (p. 120), Ludwig
42 43
Lewisohn, and Philip Rahv all cite Dreiser as the ex
treme American example of naturalism.
Fortunately a few critics are more careful with the
question of Dreiser's naturalism. Matthiessen says:
. . . it would be idle to speak of Dreiser as a natural
istic novelist in the sense of having a system of human
behavior that he wished to illustrate, just as we have
already found it beside the point to speak of the develop
ment of his fiction in relation to the deliberate mech
anical devices of Zola of which he was mainly ignorant.
(pp. 235-236)
38
Ed., American Poetry and Prose (Cambridge, Mass.,
1947), p. 1346.
39
Robert Spiller and others, eds. (New York, 1960),
rev. ed., p. 1017.
40 . .
"Contemporary American Literature," m Lewis Leary,
ed., Contemporary Literary Scholarship (New York, 1958),
p. 213.
41
The Art of the Novel (New York, 1933), p. 248.
42
Expression in America (New York, 1932), p. 464.
43
Image and Idea (Norfolk, Conn., 1949), p. 133.
18
Matthiessen concludes that Dreiser was a naturalist in the
sense that he tried to understand man's place in nature
(p. 236). By such a definition, perhaps Shakespeare would
also qualify as a naturalist.
Dreiser's kinship with the naturalists in both tech
nique and philosophy makes it essential to read An American
Tragedy with great care. Far too many critics have been
content to note only those elements which appear naturalis
tic, and to ignore the impact of the novel as an artistic
whole. Dreiser shares the naturalists' realistic aims; he
fought with them for freedom from prudery and sentimentali
ty; yet his emphasis on the inner world, his imaginative
probing beneath the surface of event and character set him
apart from the naturalists, especially in An American Trag
edy-
The Puzzle of Dreiser's Style
Another misleading commonplace of criticism is the cen
suring of Dreiser's style. His early detractors, after
damning him on moral or aesthetic grounds, would ridicule
his style. Thus the Boston Evening Transcript review of An
American Tragedy concludes:
Last of all it may be said without fear of contradiction
that Mr. Dreiser is a fearsome manipulator of the English
language. His style, if style it may be called, is offen
sively colloquial, commonplace and vulgar. (Edgett, p. 3)
Whipple is more specific:
His style is atrocious, his sentences are chaotic, his
19
grammar and syntax faulty; he has no feeling for words, no
sense of diction. His wordiness and repetitions are un
bearable, his cacophonies incredible. . . .^He violates
English and even American idiom, he often shows himself
ignorant of the meaning of words. . . . He freely mingles
the most colloquial expressions with poetic archaisms.
Worst of all is his liking for the cheap, tawdry and banal,
for phrases that are trite and florid. (p. 71)
A British review is more restrained, but not more favorable;
Mr. Dreiser has imagination and refinement in plenty, but
his manner of saying what he wants to say can be as un
couth, as slipshod and bungling as the ramblings of an
illiterate person. In short, for all his sincerity, and
power of analysis, he is hard to read.44
Stuart Sherman calls An American Tragedy "the worst
written great novel in the world" (Main Stream, p. 134),
and Lewisohn labels Dreiser "the worst writer in eminence
in the entire history of literature. He is matchless in
badness" (p. 475). Walker, attempting to reassess Dreiser
after An American Tragedy, writes;
No one among the hostile critics has thought out a suf
ficiently damning injunction against Dreiser's style. . . .
For it is bad, elaborately, unbelievably. It is a great
grey sea of flat phrases, cliches, grammatical errors and
broken-backed sentences. (p. 147)
Yet he notes in An American Tragedy, "a smoothing out of
awkward places, a growing fluency, even euphony, of line"
(p. 148).
Unfortunately for Dreiser, these critics are not merely
carping, for his style is at best uneven, and at worst
44
"An American Tragedy" (anon, rev.), Times Literary
Supplement, October 7, 1926; reprinted in Allen Angoff, ed.,
American Writing Today (New York, 1957), p. 362.
20
abominable. Walcutt remarks that Dreiser's style, "so fre
quently described as 'elephantine' as to have won a certain
proprietary right to the adjective," is the most formidable
obstacle to an appreciation of his work (in Herzberg,
p. 286). Even Dreiser's friend Sherwood Anderson admits
the flaws in his style:
How can anyone— a writer like myself— help being sorry his
tenderness does not run more directly towards words?^*
Even An American Tracredv. published when Dreiser was
fifty-four, after having written five novels, many short
stories, plays, essays, and thousands of lines of newsprint,
is still filled with the errors common to students of fresh
man composition:
And trying on various caps, there was one that fitted him
. . . " (p. 49) .
Very much fascinated by Zella Shuman and in tow of her,
they were inseparable (p. 225).
As long as she was anywhere near her she would want to
devote herself to her . . . (p. 311).
His choice of words is often inappropriate; vulgarisms
may jolt the reader, e.cr., "her plump French shoulders and
arms bare to the pits next to his" (p. 325). The flow of
A
cliches is constant: "soul of craft" (p. 44); "walked on
air" (p. 45); "part and parcel" (pp. 272, 273, 274, etc.).
A passage of serious authorial comment from The Financier
r"
45
"Dreiser," Saturday Review of Literature, XXXII
(January 9, 1926), 475.
21
shows what blundering Dreiser is capable of, with his redun
dancy, cliches, and mixed vocabulary:
Quickness of mind, subtlety of idea, fortuitousness of
opportunity, made it possible for some people to right
their matrimonial and social infelicities; whereas for
others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of compre
hension, poverty, and lack of charm, there was no escape
from the slough of their despond. They were compelled by
some devilish accident of birth or lack of force or re
sourcefulness to stew in their own juice of wretchedness,
or to shuffle off this mortal coil— which under other cir
cumstances had such glittering possibilities— via the
rope, the knife, the bullet, or the cup of poison.
(pp. 134-135).
One could perhaps excuse Dreiser as a primitive if he
did not lard his writing with exotic and abstract language
which results in an incongruous mixture:
Biltz and the fungoid farm land after Clyde and Lycurgus
was depressing enough to Roberta, for all there was too
closely identified with deprivations and repressions which
discolor the normal emotions centering about old scenes.
(An American Tragedy, p. 372).
Frequently he is all but incomprehensible:
There are moments when in connection with the sensitively
imaginative or morbidly anachronistic— the mentality as
sailed and the same not of any great strength and the
problem confronting it of sufficient force and complexity
— the reason not actually toppling from its throne, still
totters or is warped or shaken— the mind befuddled. . . .
(p. 500)46
Dreiser's attempts at poetic expression often fall to
flatness or to ridiculous sentimentality:
And as though he were a pleasant apparition suddenly
46
Alexander Kern speculates that Dreiser, like Whitman,
sought to compensate for a lack of education and culture by
affecting an elaborate vocabulary ("Dreiser's Difficult
Beauty," Western Review, XVI [Winter 1952], 130).
22
evoked out of nothing and nowhere, a poetic effort taking
form out of smoke or vibrant energy, she in turn stood
staring down at him, her lips unable to resist the wavy
line of beauty that a happy mood always brought to them.
(p. 284)
Perhaps most annoying of all his faults in composition
is that Dreiser apparently never learned to write a good
sentence. His parentheses, qualifiers, and loose connec
tives string along until the sentence sags and falters, lack
ing the form to bear its mass. Many of the sentences already
quoted illustrate the awkwardness of his long sentences.
Unfortunately, one cannot excuse Dreiser as R. P. Blackmur
does Henry James, saying that James's elaborate sentences
"render shades and refinements of meaning and feeling not
47
usually rendered at all," for Dreiser's lengthy sentences
are often redundant and confusing:
Once through it, he beheld a lobby, the like of which, for
all his years but because of the timorous poverty that had
restrained him from exploring such a world, was more ar
resting quite, than anything he had seen before. (p. 41)
But Gilbert bristled and chilled, the while Bella and
Myra, if not Mrs. Griffiths, who favored her only son in
everything— even to preferring him to be without a blood
relation or other rival of any kind, rather warmed to the
idea. (pp. 176-177)
Dreiser's imagery also exhibits both his lack of taste
and of consistency, as well as his imaginative power. His
images are sometimes incongruous, poorly suited to the tone
of their context, for example, at a formal dinner dance, a
47
Introduction, The Art of the Novel (New York, 1934),
p. xiii. ^
23
modish youth "looked down on Clyde about as a spring rooster
might look down on a sparrow" (p. 351). The farmyard images
are hardly suited to the occasion. Later that evening when
Clyde and Sondra are dancing, they are described as,
dipping and swaying here and there— harmoniously abandoning
themselves to the rhythm of the music— like two small
chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea.
(p. 359)
The sea image is not only out of harmony with the scene, but
suggests size and movement too huge for the small dancing
party. Dreiser's imagery is also fraught with cliches; he
repeatedly describes lakes as "sentineled" by pine trees
(see, for example, p. 518).
The dramatic scene of Clyde's capture demonstrates both
inept and effective imagery. As the district attorney's
' questions reveal that Clyde's whole scheme is known, Clyde
shrunk and congealed spiritually, the revealing effects
of his so poorly conceived and executed scheme weighing
upon him as the world upon the shoulmrs of an inadequate
Atlas. (p. 605)
Here again the image is out of proportion to the situation
and to the character. Farther down on the same page far
more effective images convey almost the same idea:
And although at the out-rush and jab and slash of such
dooming facts as Mason so rapidly outlined, his throat
tightened and his hands were with difficulty restrained
from closing and clinching vise-wise, at the conclusion
of it all he merely replied, "Yes, sir." (p. 605)
Dreiser often strikes an image which is sharp and vital,
even symbolic. The glamorous Sondra is characterized as "a
bright-colored bird" (p. 590), suggesting her beauty and her
24
personality, as well as the fruitlessness of Clyde's pursuit
of her. The weight of evidence against him is more than
Clyde's mind can face: "And all this Clyde registered men
tally like a machine clicking to a coin ..." (p. 607).
Another striking and effective image is the description of
Jephson, who has just asked a suggestive question relating
to sexual promiscuity, turning away "as calm as though he
had just lit and thrown away a match" (p; 741). The image
not only makes vivid Jephson's nonchalance, but suggests the
explosiveness of his question.
Dreiser's more heavily imagistic passages suffer from
lack of restraint, for he may spoil an effective image by
pushing it too hard:
And all the dry marshes and cracked and parched banks of
her soul— the dry rivulets and streams and lakes of mis
ery that seemed to dot her being— were as instantly
flooded with this rich upwelling force of life and love.
(p. 327)
The water imagery is appropriate and beautiful in this con
text, but there is too much of it; the reader begins to feel
soggy when he reaches the lakes of misery. As is true of
his choice of words, Dreiser's imagery is marred by incon
gruity and ineptness, often enough so that his effective
writing is overlooked.
For despite obvious lapses, Dreiser is capable of ef
fective, and occasionally even excellent writing. Matthies-
sen praises his plain style:
Charges of clumsiness have been repeated against him so
25
often that they have obscured the many passages where, like
the journeyman painter, he has a mastery of the plain
style. When his mind was most absorbed with what he had
to say, the flourishes of the feature writer fell away, as
did also the cumbersome, only half accurate abstract
terms. . . . Then he could write long passages where noth
ing is striking but the total effect. (p. 87)
Dudley makes the same highly subjective point:
Dreiser is without truth of language in relation to sur
face tone, exactly the way that our cities and our streets
and our buildings are without it. . . . Dreiser is somer
times a sprawling, sometimes a soaring block of buildings,
structured when seen as a whole; insensitive when consid
ered close up. (p. 3)
Readers of An American Tragedy will not miss the flaws
in his style, but they would be unjust to ignore its
strengths; he writes many paragraphs of clear, evocative
narrative like the following:
As they rode along Roberta found herself checking off men
tally every tree, curve, landmark with which she had been
familiar. But with no happy thoughts. It was all too
drab. The farm itself, coupled with the chronic illness
and inefficiency of Titus and the inability of the young
est boy Tom or her mother to help much, was as big a bur
den as ever. A mortgage of $2000 that had been placed on
it years before had never been paid off, the north chimney
was still impaired, the steps were sagging even more than
ever and the walls and fences and outlying buildings were
no different— save to be made picturesque now by the snows
of winter covering them. Even the furniture remained the
same jumble that it had always been. And there were her
mother and younger sister and brother, who knew nothing of
her true relationship to Clyde— a mere name his here— and
assuming that she was whole-heartedly delighted to be back
with them once more. Yet because of what she knew of her
own life and Clyde's uncertain attitude toward her, she
was now, if anything, more depressed than before. (p. 373)
Notice how simply and easily Dreiser carries the story
along on several levels: first, the simple movement of
Roberta from the station to her home; second, a history and
26
description of the farm, and condition of the family; third,
the feelings of Roberta on seeing her home again, with her
sense of having a life apart from it clouded by her uncer
tain love affair. We may not see clever writing here, but
we do see Roberta and her troubled situation.
Dreiser's own attitude toward his style is apparently a
mixture of naivete and defensiveness. To the critics of
Sister Carrie he replied:
To sit up and criticize me for saying "vest," instead of
"waistcoat"; to talk about my splitting the infinitive and
using vulgar commonplaces here and there, when the tragedy
of a man's life is being displayed, is silly.48
Yet Dreiser recognized that he was not a fine writer and
leaned heavily upon his editors. He cautions Louise Camp
bell, who had edited the manuscript of An American Tragedy,
But I still think you cut a little too close. I don't
want my style to become too crisp or snappy. It has an
involute character which to a degree should remain. (Let
ters, II, 590).
A few weeks later his emphasis is different: "Incidentally
don't let dullness or turgidity escape. If you're afraid to
cut mark for me to look at" (Letters, II, 592).
Ironically, however, Dreiser seemed to learn little
from those who tried to correct and guide him. Lewisohn
reports a revealing incident:
To our favorite table Dreiser brought a story he had just
finished. I went over it with him, confining my criti
cism and corrections to purely formal matters. He was
48
(Anon, interview) in Kazin, Stature, p. 60.
27
extremely good-humored and really docile about it all.
When the story appeared, I found all my corrections em
bodied in the text. But Dreiser had been busy making
corrections, too. For every barbarism I had eliminated,
two had slipped in.49
While perhaps, as George Wicher suggests, such an incident
shows Dreiser's massive honesty,50 it also shows his lack of
taste, his insensitivity to the faults of his own style.
In the end, each reader must evaluate Dreiser's style
for himself; surely it will grate on some ears, as on Don
Marqui s':
I don't find what he has to say worth what his sufferings
must have been in getting it written, or my sufferings in
getting it read. I can't even admire his stubborn persis
tence in sticking to a trade for which he seems so emi
nently unfitted.51
For other readers, however, it has a deep harmony of its
own. Hatcher admires its "rugged strength," and suggests
that a more finished style would lack its "striking power"
(p. 55). Powys finds its "rough scales and horny excrescen
ces" an integral part of its author's "spiritual skin"
(p. 335). Kenneth Rexroth even calls Dreiser "one of the
52
few genuine stylists" of his time.
49
"American Memories," Cities and Men (New York, 1927),
p. 91.
50
"The Twentieth Century," in Arthur H. Quinn, ed., The
Literature of the American People (New York, 1951), p. 850.
51
Saturday Review of Literature. IX (October 15, 1932),
174, cols. 2-3.
52
"Tragedy of Ugliness," Nation. CXCIII (November 18,
1961), 406.
28
The frequent use of the words power, force, and strength
to describe Dreiser's writing lends credence to Saul Bellow's
suggestion that "the criticisms of Dreiser as a stylist at
times betray a resistance to the feelings he causes the
53
readers to suffer." Edmund Wilson's complaint seems to
confirm Bellow's diagnosis:
To follow the moral disintegration of Hurstwood is to suf
fer all the agonies of being out of work without being
rewarded by the esthetic pleasure which art is supposed to
supply.54
Other critics argue that Dreiser's writing is effective
despite the difficulties created by flaws in his style.
Sherwood Anderson says,
Plenty of word lovers in the world, loving words, slinging
ink. But Dreiser isn't one of them. If you look for
word-love in his book you'll get left. Love of human
beings you'll find. It's a finer attribute in the end.
(p. 475)
Mencken gives a similar judgment: "Dreiser can feel, and
feeling, he can move. The others are very skillful with
words" (as quoted by Matthiessen, p. 210). Upon labeling
An American Tragedy the greatest American novel of its gener
ation, Joseph Wood Krutch says,
Nor it must be added, do the much-advertised faults of
Mr. Dreiser's style come between the reader and the events
which he is following; for so absorbing are the things
communicated that one forgets completely the manner in
53 .
"Dreiser and the Triumph of Art," Commentary, XI
(May, 1951), 503.
54
"The All-Star Literary Vaudeville," New Republic,
XLVII (June 30, 1926), 158.
29
which they are communicated— a fact which must mean, as I
take it, that Mr. Dreiser's style is, for his own purpose,
perfect.55
Dreiser's own attitude toward words, difficult as it
may be for those guided by the new critics, may furnish a
helpful framework for viewing his writings:
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the
volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining
together great inaudible feelings and purposes. (Sister
Carrie, p. 8).
Cowley reads Dreiser in this spirit:
There are moments when Dreiser's awkwardness in handling
words contributes to the force of his novels, since he
seems to be groping in them for something on a deeper
level than language; there are crises when he stutters in
trite phrases that are like incoherent cries.55
Criticism which over-simplifies the work of Dreiser,
by making too much of the flaws in his style or by writing
him off as a naturalistic pioneer, is unjust not only for
what it says, but for what it fails to say. Too often his
novels are treated as literary curiosities or historical
landmarks, rather than as literature. Such criticism is
especially unfair to An American Tragedy, for this novel is
much more than a now-faded photograph or a historical docu
ment; it is an example of literary craftsmanship, an artis
tic achievement bearing universal themes, and significant
moral and psychological insights.
55
"Crime and Punishment" (rev. of An American Tragedy),
Nation, CXXII (February 10, 1926), 152.
C C
"Sister Carrie's Brother," New Republic, CXVI (May 26,
1947), 24. Unfortunately Cowley gives no examples.
CHAPTER II
STRUCTURE
Remolding the Gillette Case
A young man named Chester Gillette drowned his pregnant
sweetheart, Grace Brown, in Moose Lake, in Herkimer County,
New York, on July 11, 1906. For this crime he was electro
cuted on March 20, 1908. The chief incidents of the case
and the subsequent trial (even some two thousand words ver
batim from the court records) appear in An American Tragedy.
Yet the novel is not merely a fictionalized or sensational
ized account of that case. As a reporter at the Gillette
trial, Marlen Pew writes:
High pressure imagination without stint went into the book
and picture. . . . Mr. Dreiser and the showmen have gilded
the lily. Why spoil the classical narrative of the poor
little mountain lass, innocent of the world and its ways,
who went down to Cortland to work in the rich man's collar
factory to aid her poverty-ridden father and mother, there
falling afoul of the wiles of the sly, dressed-up but ig
norant and lusting nephew of the "big boss" of the fac
tory? . . . The author of "American Tragedy" put a drama
tic snapper to his tale, not justified by the facts, and
this is Okeh with me if it is fiction, but the story
should not then be so generally accepted as an actual ver
sion of the Big Moose Lake tragedy.1
After detailed study of the novel and the sources (court
"Shop Talk at Thirty," Editor and Publisher, October
10, 1931, p. 48. Pew's remarks were apparently prompted by
the first movie version of the novel.
30
31
records and newspaper accounts) John F. Castle concludes
that the novel is far from factual, despite its obvious
2
debt to the Gillette case.
The differences between the cases of Chester Gillette
and Clyde Griffiths reveal both Dreiser's vision and his
skillful craftsmanship. To begin with, Dreiser has moved
the date forward to an undetermined time shortly after
World War I. The free flow of liquor in Book I even sug
gests that it precedes Prohibition. Matthiessen comments
that this was a "showy" period (p. 191), when the youth were
being inflamed by the wealth and luxury visible in big city
life and in opulent movie scenes. The automobile, which
brought the adventures of the rich through the public streets
created new freedom and excitement. George J. Becker com
ments that Dreiser uses the automobile to indicate a true
extravagance.^
While the rapid economic expansion inflated the Horatio
Alger dreams of thousands of rural and small-town youth, the
4
swift changes in mores caused many a young man to view his
parents' moral code as stodgy and unrealistic. Since the
2
"The Making of An American Tragedy,1 1 unpub. diss.
(University of Michigan, 1953), p. 84.
3
"Theodore Dreiser: The Realist as Social Critic,"
Twentieth Century Literature. I (October 1955), 123.
4
See Frederick L. Allen, Only Yesterday (New York,
1931), pp. 88-122.
32
lines between the social classes had grown more rigid between
1906 and 1920 (Castle, p. 121), in the later period there
was more tempting contrast between rich and poor, and yet
less chance for social and economic advancement. It waa a
period of dreams, unrest, and uncertainty. The popular
song, "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm After They've
Seen Paree?" symbolized an era which could have produced
many a Clyde Griffiths. Unlike the narrow focus of the Gil
lette case records, the drama of Clyde Griffiths plays
against a background of an entire era, reveals a whole soci
ety and its values.
The Plot of the Novel
An American Tragedy opens as the Griffiths family con
ducts a street meeting in downtown Kansas City, the poorly-
clad family of six making an ineffectual picture against the
vigorous crowd of home-bound workers. Clyde, at twelve, is
ashamed of his family's public religious displays and doubts
the Providence they praise in their cheap, faded mission.
Nevertheless he respects his mother (who is a contrast to
her fumbling husband) for her "force and earnestness, as
well as her sweetness" (p. 18).
The family's wanderings and poverty have prevented the
children from regular schooling, a handicap for Clyde even
at fifteen. He bitterly contrasts their wretched poverty
with the comforts of others, and he envies the family of
his father's brother, a successful collar manufacturer in
33
Lycurgus, New York. At sixteen Clyde is a handsome lad who
finds his growing interest in girls frustrated by his lack
of money and clothes.
When his sister Esta runs away with a passing actor,
Clyde decides to strike out on his own. As a bellboy at the
ornate Hotel Green-Davidson, he determines that money is the
key to luxury, independence and pleasure. Increasingly he
draws away from his family to be with his fellow bellboys,
even visiting a brothel with them, although he considers
himself above its frequenters.
Later Clyde becomes enamoured of an attractive but self
ish flirt, Hortense Briggs, and in order to buy her favors
with a fur coat, he guiltily refuses his mother's plea for
money for Esta, who has returned, abandoned, pregnant, and
ill. While Clyde and Hortense are riding with a friend,
the car strikes a child. The panicky driver, who has taken
the car without permission from his father's employer,
wrecks the car in attempting to escape the police. The
youths scatter, and Clyde, fearing disgrace or even prison,
flees from town.
In Book II, Clyde, now twenty-one, after meeting his
uncle while a bellboy in Chicago, comes to Lycurgus to work
in the collar factory. Partly owing to the resentment of
his cousin Gilbert, he is given a menial position and is
ignored by the Griffiths family. He finds life in a modest
boarding house painfully lonely, and as a Griffiths feels
34
himself above the factory and office workers. He hesitantly
accepts the friendship of a fellow boarder, Walter Dillard,
who introduces him to Rita Dickerman, a girl who draws
Clyde by her soft beauty, but disgusts him by her forward
ness.
When the family at last invites Clyde to dinner, he
meets the wealthy Sondra Finchley, and drops his lesser
friends. His hopes for social advancement grow after a pro
motion puts him in charge of twenty-five girls in the stamp
ing department. Even though some of them are obviously
flirtatious, he resolves to obey the company rule which for
bids a department head to have anything to do with the girls
under him. With the coming of summer, however, he seeks out
the newly-hired Roberta Alden, a sweet, refined girl who is
as poor and lonely as he. Af£er an idyllic accidental meet
ing at Crum Lake, they meet secretly until cold weather,
when Clyde insists upon calling at her room. Their subse
quent intimacies delight and trouble both of them, and while
Clyde sincerely promises not to desert her in case of need,
he dreams not of marriage to a factory girl, but of wealth
and social success.
He drifts along, finding joy in Roberta's love, until
November, when Sondra mistakes him for Gilbert and invites
him for a drive. Intrigued by his good looks and by the
impression she makes on him, she has him invited to a dinner
dance. As other invitations from her friends follow, Clyde
35
is almost mesmerized by Sondra*s gay beauty and by the bril
liance of her social world. Roberta, who senses Clyde's
growing indiffererfce, spends a sad Christmas at her parents'
dreary farm, while Clyde has Christmas dinner with the Grif
fiths family and is invited to a New Years fete by Sondra.
When Roberta returns, Clyde is so touched by her downcast
and troubled manner that he foolishly continues their rela
tionship, hiding the fact that his dreams dwell on Sondra.
In February, Roberta finds herself pregnant, and when
drugs and an attempt to get an abortion fail, she refuses to
consider Clyde's plea that she go away alone to have the
child, with his financial support. She insists that he marry
her. Clyde stalls for time, since luxury and love are so
near his grasp now that Sondra has hinted at marriage. He
fears too that exposure of his relationship with Roberta
would mean the loss of his job, his only means of escaping
a life-long grind of poverty. Finally in June he promises
to come for Roberta if she will take a few weeks at her
parents' home to rest and prepare a trousseau. She goes
home, skeptical of his promise, and her anxious, insistent
letters contrast pathetically with the gay notes Sondra
writes from her family's summer lodge.
When Roberta finally threatens to return and expose
him, Clyde becomes desperate. The account of an accidental
drowning of a young girl and the disappearance of her male
companion horrifies him as he finds himself wishing for a
similar solution to his dilemma. During a gay resort week
end, when Sondra promises to elope in the fall, they visit
Big Bittern lake, and Clyde finds himself thinking of it as
lonely enough for a faked accident. When he takes Roberta
there, however, in his tortured, trance-like state, he can
not bring himself to drown her. Then as she rises and comes
toward him in the boat, he unintentionally strikes her with
his camera. The boat overturns and stuns her. He does not
go to her aid. She drowns.
Book III opens as the coroner receives news of the re
covery of a girl's body. The bruises on her face and head,
and the contents of a letter addressed to her mother suggest
that her drowning might not have been an accident, particu
larly when her companion's body is missing and a young man
of his description has been seen walking away from the lake.
When the local district attorney, Orville Mason, to whom a
murder trial appears a political opportunity, informs the
Aldens of Roberta's death, he gains Clyde's name from Mrs.
Alden. A search of Clyde's room reveals incriminating let
ters from both Roberta and Sondra, which furnish a motive.
The alarm goes out for Clyde.
Meanwhile, at the Cranston lake lodge, Clyde tries to
hide his nervous agitation from Sondra and her friends. On
a group camping trip he is captured by the sheriff and is
taken to the local jail. He denies everything, and even
insists he did not have a camera, thought to be the instru-
37
ment which caused Roberta's injuries. When both his camera
and tripod are found, a deputy makes this evidence more
damaging by winding on the camera a few hairs which he has
taken from Roberta's body.
The Lycurgus Griffiths family, fearing ruin of their
name, undertake Clyde's defense. Their lawyer, who finds
Clyde's tangled story indefensible, if not incredible, con
cocts a false, but less complicated version. On the opening
day of the trial Clyde shrinks from Roberta's family and
the obviously hostile spectators. The district attorney
charges that Clyde is a sneaking seducer and a vicious mur
derer. The testimony of dozens of witnesses to Clyde's
suspicious actions, and the reading of Roberta's touching
letters make Clyde's case seem hopeless.
Clyde's attorneys reply that Clyde had never planned to
harm Roberta, but had taken her to the lake country in order
to convince her to go away alone; the Big Bittern visit had
been, in fact, her suggestion. Once there, Clyde, touched
by her condition, underwent a change of heart and planned to
marry her if she still wanted him after hearing of his love
for Sondra. Well-drilled but nervous, Clyde tries to uphold
this version of his actions, but the cross-examination shows
that he had lied when he denied getting Big Bittern folders
in Lycurgus, and that he had failed to ask the price of boat
rental at-Big Bittern. When the jury finds Clyde guilty, he
is sentenced to the electric chair. The Griffiths decline
38
to pay for an appeal. Then his lawyers send for his mother,
who raises the funds by lecturing on his case.
Clyde spends more than a year in the death house at
Auburn, waiting action on his appeal. There he struggles
with a sense of guilt and injustice. While he is agonized
by the terrors of death about him, he is both comforted and
disturbed by the sympathy and faith of his mother and young
Reverend Duncan McMillan, a constant visitor.
But Clyde's appeal fails, and the governor refuses to
pardon him. Although prompted by McMillan to sign a state
ment of religious conversion, Clyde goes to his death still
tortured by uncertainty. The final scene, like the first,
shows the Griffiths family conducting a street meeting, with
Esta's son in Clyde's place. Mrs. Griffiths, thinking of
Clyde, gives the boy a dime for an ice cream cone.
The Novel and Its Source
Besides the change in date and scope already discussed,
differences between the novel and the Gillette case are ob-
5
vious from the opening page. Although the Gillette family
had moved from city to city as Salvation Army workers, their
modestly good income had provided Chester with two years at
Oberlin college (Castle, p. 15). Thus none of the depriva
tions Clyde suffers in Book I is from the life of Chester
5
See below, p. 43, for a summary of the significant
differences between the novel and the Gillette case.
39
Gillette. Clyde's life as a bellboy, his thwarted romance,
his sister's tragedy, and the final auto accident are all
Dreiser's invention, for Chester was working as a railroad
brakeman when his uncle, on a routine visit to the family,
offered him a job in New York (Castle, p. 14).
Chester had led quite a different life in New York also.
His uncle owned a very small factory with a handful of em
ployees; Chester was given a supervisory position at once
with the promise of a raise at the end of a year. His so
cial position as well differed from that of Clyde, for he was
active in social affairs at his church and was welcomed in
the best homes of the city (Castle, p. 16). It was not nec
essary for him to scale social barriers, for his uncle had
only a modest wealth, and the families of a minister and a
doctor were among those whose daughters were Chester's
friends (Castle, p. 146). None of these families owned a
lake resort or was nearly as wealthy as the Lycurgus elite.
In addition, Chester's relationship with Grace differed
from that of Clyde and Roberta. While Chester courted Grace
entirely at her home, it was not in secret. They ate lunch
together daily at the factory; against the company rules,
she had access to the stockroom he managed. His aunt and
his supervisor had spoken to him about this strange rela
tionship, suggesting thaj: he either stop seeing Grace or
take her out socially (Castle, p. 17). Chester had only
casual friends among the well-placed girls in Cortland, and
40
often escorted one or another, including his cousin, to social
affairs. Dreiser's glamorous Sondra had no counterpart in
Chester's life.
Dreiser subtly remolds the pivotal scene. Chester
Gillette had apparently struck Grace with a tennis racquet
(Castle, p. 121), an unusual article to have in a boat,
whereas it was perfectly natural for Clyde to have a camera.
While Chester's defense only suggested that the boat striking
Grace would be one of the several plausible explanations for
her bruises, Dreiser shows the blow. These minor but cru
cial changes lessen the element of apparent premeditation and
increase the role of chance. Despite the presence of the
tennis racquet and the bruises on the body, Chester had main
tained at his trial that Grace threw herself overboard in a
frenzy of shame and despair (Pew, p. 48). Clyde's explana
tion is much more plausible. These differences increase
the difficulty of assessing Clyde's guilt, not only for the
jury, but for Clyde himself and for the reader.
The aftermath of the crime furnishes several minor, but
dramatic ironies, all of them Dreiser's additions to the
story. The society youths whom Clyde joins at Twelfth Lake
play at upsetting their boat and jest of drowning; it is
Sondra herself who brings the news of the Big Bittern drown
ing. During the trial, Clyde, who has always been tormented
by his poverty, is attacked as a representative of the
wealthy Griffiths, a relationship he had coveted, but never
41
attained. Clyde's stopping for lunch in order to break his
trail is interpreted as a sign of his callousness. At the
very moment that Clyde's lawyer cautions him that the truth
is better than any lie, Clyde is struggling to lie according
to the lawyer's instructions. It is an unnecessary lie about
a minor detail which casts suspicion on his carefully fabri
cated story.
Dreiser's sharp focus on the state of mind of his hero
puts the recorded details of Chester's case far in the back
ground. From the outset Clyde had been subject to quite
other influences than had Chester; he faced stronger roman
tic and material temptation; thus his motives were not those
of Chester. In the crucial moments after his conviction,
Chester appeared indifferent;
After his conviction, late at night, he returned to his
cell, ripped off his clothes, and was sound asleep in a
few minutes. The boy was only once removed from the
moron type. (Pew, p. 48).
Clyde's state at the same moment reveals the sensitive con
sciousness which is wholly Dreiser's creation:
They were cheering Mason for convicting him. In that
large crowd out there there was not one who did not be
lieve him totally and completely guilty. Roberta— her
letters— her determination to make him marry her— her
giant fear of exposure— had dragged him down to this. To
conviction. To death, maybe. Away from all he had longed
for— away from all he had dreamed he might possess. And
Sondra1 Sondra! Not a word! And so now, fearing that
Kraut or Sissel or some one might be watching (ready to
report even now his every gesture), and not willing to
show after all how totally collapsed and despondent he
really was, he sat down and taking up a magazine pretended
to read, the while he looked far, far beyond it to other
scenes— his mother— his brother and sisters— the Griffiths
42
— all he had known. But finding these unsubstantiated mind
visions a little too much, he finally got up and throwing
off his clothes climbed into his iron cot. "Convicted!
Convicted!" And that meant that he must die! But how
blessed to be able to conceal his face upon a pillow and
not let any one see— however accurately they might guess!
(pp. 796-797)
By this time what Clyde Griffiths is and what he suffers
have superseded the actual case of Chester Gillette.
The Framework of the Novel
In turning the Gillette case into a novel, Dreiser
shows not only his imaginative vision, but his mastery of a
craftsmanship which is too seldom recognized. A typical
view is that of John Chamberlain: "As a craftsman, Dreiser
has made little mark." Other critics are even less favor
able: Whipple says, "Of narrative form he seems to have no
conception at all . . ." (p. 71). Frances Ludlow writes:
In constructing his novels Dreiser used much the same
method that he used in constructing his sentence. He sim
ply plodded straight ahead. It was not for him to select,
to sift, to present only the most significant and dramatic
scenes.'
While such comments may be somewhat just to the earlier nov
els, they are most unfair to An American Tragedy. A less
typical but more discriminating judge is Charles C. Walcutt,
who remarks that An American Tragedy does not share the
g
"Theodore Dreiser," New Republic. LXXXIX (December 23,
1936), 238.
7
"Plodding Crusader," College English, VIII (October
1946), 4.
43
Significant Differences Between Source and Novel
Chester Gillette Clyde Griffiths
(Comment)
Date, 1906 Post World War I
istic period)
(Showy, material-
Family of moderate
means
Family poor
Two years at college Irregular schooling until age 15
Uncle owns very small
factory
Courtland friends of
upper middle class
readily accept him
Uncle owns large, prosperous fac
tory
Tries to break into wealthiest
class in Lycurgus (Increases
social and economic contrasts)
Courts Grace openly
Steadily employed as
brakeman
Casual girl friends
Age, 23
Forced to secret courtship
Forced to make his own way after
accident
Great love for Sondra
Two years younger
Sympathy weakened by his sister's
pregnancy (Makes Clyde's motives
more plausible)
Uncle on routine visit
Grace already employed
at factory
Meets uncle by chance
Chance meeting of Roberta at lake
Weapon, tennis racquet Camera
Facts of drowning un-
known_______________
Drowning definitely accidental
(Increases role of chance)
Grace forced to move Roberta initiates move
Chances to meet friends Invited to lake resort previously
after drowning____________(Decreases role of chance)______
Relatives make no effort Uncle pays for defense (Enhances
for his defense character of uncle)_____________
No proof of abortion
attempt
Roberta sees doctor twice seeking
an abortion (Develops character
of Roberta; increases tension and
pathos)____________________________
44
"formlessness" of the earlier novels, for every event is
g
related to the "central crisis of Roberta’s murder." Others
agree. George Snell says that despite its size the novel
has "much the best integrated structure of any Dreiser
9
novel." Walker writes,
An American Tragedy is wrought in closer mesh, I think,
than the others. . . . There isn't that baggage of skele
ton events, names and discussions. . . . (p. 148)
The first and last chapters create a dramatic frame for
the novel. Like the rest of Book I, the first chapter por
trays Clyde's early experiences, especially his reaction to
the religious practices of the family. From the outset
Dreiser focuses on Clyde and remains there, in contrast to
the newspaper accounts of the Gillette case which had played
up the romantic and pathetic figure of Grace Brown (Castle,
p. 156). The last chapter creates a quiet, restrained close
after the horrors of the execution chamber, restoring the
reader to the normal flow of life. As it echoes the first
chapter, however, even repeats whole sentences, it suggests
that Clyde's death has settled nothing, for the puzzlement
of existence goes on almost as before, even for those most
touched by his tragedy. Between these parallel scenes
Dreiser suspends the life of Clyde Griffiths.
g
American Literary Naturalism, A Divided Stream (Minne
apolis, 1956), p. 210.
^The Shapers of American Fiction 1798-1947 (New York,
1947), p. 244.
45
Clyde's story turns on the sharp contrast between the
world of the rich and the world of the poor. In Book I, the
drab poverty of the mission contrasts with the vigor, gaiety
and luxury of the hotel world. This contrast is repeated in
Book II, where the poor farm life of the Aldens, which re
awakens Clyde's almost irrational dread of poverty, contrasts
with the luxurious world of the Griffiths and Finchleys. In
Clyde's first look at Lycurgus, he walks symbolically from
the slums toward Wykeagy Avenue. The contrast makes poign
ant the scene where Roberta, home for a drab Christmas
with her family, reads in the society pages of a gay holiday
party Clyde has attended. The contrasting worlds symbolize
Clyde's dilemma, showing the distance between Clyde and his
dreams.
Clyde's long story is kept flowing by the constant
movement of major plot lines. In Book I, the tension is
built on Clyde's pursuit of Hortense, which begins in chap
ter 11. Their romantic fencing, as Hortense alternately en
courages and rebuffs Clyde, creates suspense by its constant
shifts, and brings tension from the contrast between Clyde's
intense emotion and Hortense's calculated pretenses. The
complicating factors are Clyde's concern over the morality
of his desires and the conflict created by his mother's
need of the money he wishes to spend on Hortense. The se
quence ends without resolution, when an auto accident forces
Clyde to flee. In Book II, the plot line follows a similar
46
pattern: an aspiring Clyde seeks and dreams, then meets
disaster. Here the plot becomes complicated early by the
conflicting appeal of Roberta and Sondra, and the tension is
intensified by Roberta's pregnancy. Although for the entire
last half of the novel Clyde lives in a terror-filled crisis^
even in Book III, during his trial and imprisonment the
sense of dramatic movement is maintained. His star rises-
with the autopsy on Roberta^ then falls with the finding of
the camera; rises with the work of his lawyers, then falls
with the testimony of hostile witnesses; rises with the
loving efforts of his mother and falls with the failure of
his appeals. As Clyde's possibilities for decisive overt
action diminish, Dreiser focuses increasingly on his mental
state, on his struggle with guilt and terror, on his quest
for the meaning of existence and man's eternal destiny.
Placement of Episodes
Dreiser's placement of the minor episodes which make up
the major plot lines contributes to the sense of movement
and creates tension, contrast and variety."^ In Book I, for
example, Clyde visits a brothel before he meets Hortense;
the initial sexual contact makes Clyde more daring and ur
gent, which prepares the reader for his pursuit of Hortense.
^See below, pp. 72-76, for a summary of the sequence
of the episodes in the novel in relation to the elapsed
time and the number of pages devoted to each.
47
The contrast between the two experiences adds dimension to
the sex theme by revealing that Clyde is tantalized but dis
satisfied by the brothel experience; more than mere flesh,
he craves a meaningful companionship. Similarly, while Hor-
tense's hint for a coat could have been placed before Esta's
return or after her crisis, by making them simultaneous,
Dreiser increases the dramatic tension. Kern observes that
by such "complication of action," Dreiser "stretches the
reader's tension" (p. 135). The placing of the incidents
together also makes Clyde's choice more revealing of his
character, since he has money for Hortense, but not for his
distraught mother and sister.
Contrasting episodes add tension and variety in the
novel. The final chapters of Book I use contrast for drama-
✓
tic effect. Chapter 18 details the innocently risque frolic
of the bellboys and their dates on an iced-over river. The
gaiety and frivolity of the prevailing mood and the swift
aimlessness of the action contrast with Clyde's bitter jeal
ousy over Hortense's flirting, and with the scarcely sup
pressed viciousness of their quarrel. At the end of the
chapter the tension is resolved by Hortense's artful promise
of future favors. in the following chapter, in sharp con
trast to frolic and romance, is the suspense created by the
car's slow return and the boys' growing fear of being late
for work; then, abruptly, accident, flight, and wreck— the
gay outing ends in death and disaster.
48
Book II and Book III both open with a dramatic and sym
bolic contrast. The opening chapters of Book II are set
among the wealthy Lycurgus Griffiths; the quiet luxury of
their household contrasts with the barren, struggling life
Clyde has lived in Book I, and symbolizes the world of
wealth and prestige which will tempt Clyde. In addition,
the family dinner conversation reveals a significant con
trast of interests and motives among the family members con
cerning the two topics of conversation, the Finchley family
and Clyde. The final sound in Book II, the haunting call of
the weir-weir bird, symbolic of the darkness and mystery in
life and nature, is superseded in Book III by the whirr of
a telephone bell which represents the human and mechanical
process which will bring Clyde to the electric chair.
In developing Clyde's conflict over Roberta and Sondra,
Dreiser's placement of episodes is important. Dreiser keeps
both girls in view throughout the book, skillfully giving
emphasis to first one and then the other. Even chapter 27,
which begins with Clyde's joy in Roberta's love (p. 328),
ends with Clyde's dreams of Wykeagy Avenue life (p. 331).
The chapter, the culmination of Clyde's romance with Roberta
is followed by five chapters devoted almost entirely to Son
dra and her world. Roberta is kept very much in the back
ground until the brief post-Christmas scene where she accu
ses Clyde of neglecting her, and he tenderly but foolishly
resumes their romantic relationship.
49
This scene is followed by an ominous contrast: Clyde's
first real encouragement from Sondra, an intimate tete-a-
tite over a cup of hot chocolate. The preceding scene in
Roberta's cramped room contrasts vividly with the luxury of
the elaborate Finchley kitchen; Clyde's pity for Roberta
with his soaring dreams of Sondra. In the scene immediately
following, Clyde learns of Roberta's pregnancy; the stress
of the situation is heightened by Dreiser's focusing on
Roberta and Clyde for the next fifty pages, with Sondra in
the background. The section culminates with Roberta's first
clear demand that Clyde marry her, immediately followed by
Sondra's reappearance with a hint that she will marry Clyde.
As the threat of the Roberta problem grows, so does the ap
peal and possibility of the Sondra romance.
Dreiser's astute selection and placement of episodes is
also apparent in Book III. The horror of the execution of
Pasquale Cutrone is heightened by its occurring within a
week after Clyde enters the death house, when his nerves are
still shaken even by the daily terrors of the place. By
giving rather full detail to the emotional impact of this
first execution, Dreiser can treat the later execution of
Clyde's friend Nicholson in a much more restrained fashion,
saving the later episode from bathos and sentimentality.
Dreiser's selective arrangement of episodes throughout the
novel makes use of juxtaposition and contrast to create ten
sion, variety and dramatic interest in his very long tale,
50
and to increase its subtlety.
Handling of Time
While for the most part the story of Clyde Griffiths
is presented in chronological sequence/ as is typical of
Dreiser's earlier novels, Dreiser uses flashback scenes at
several crucial points. Book II jumps over the three years
following Clyde’s Kansas City accident to present the Lycur-
gus Griffiths family as they learn that Samuel Griffiths has
offered Clyde a job. Thus a sense of anticipation of a new
life for Clyde colors the flashback in the following chapter
to his attempts during the previous three years to support
himself .while avoiding prosecution for his all-but-innocent
part in the accident. The reader's sympathy for Clyde is
touched by his struggles, so that the following chapter
which dramatizes his appeal to his uncle is made pleasurable
by the knowledge that Clyde will be given a job.
Later in Book II, when Clyde, beginning to tire of
Roberta finds himself drawn into Lycurgus society, Dreiser
again uses a flashback. Roberta, saddened by Clyde's in
difference, spends a troubled, restless Christmas holiday
with her parents where a report she reads in the society
pages of Clyde's presence at a holiday party increases her
fears of losing him (p. 382). The following chapter goes
back to Lycurgus to show Gilbert Griffiths reading the same
account, through which the family learns that Clyde is en-
51
tering their social circle. Feeling obligated to their
friends if not to Clyde, they invite him to dinner on Christ
mas. The gala holiday dinner Clyde enjoys, followed by an
after-dinner party for the younger set is thus played against
the drab Christmas of Roberta. The contrast not only
heightens the dramatic effect of the scenes, but suggests a
dark fulfillment of Roberta's fear.
At another crucial point in Book II, while Roberta is
home waiting for Clyde to come to marry her, he spends a
week end with Sondra at the lake; while there, the party
motors to Big Bittern, a near-by lake, but this episode is
not revealed until the following chapter (44) in another
flashback. In chapter 44, Clyde, now back in his Lycurgus
room after a week end of luxury and romance, reads two let
ters from Roberta which rouse him to the seriousness and
hopelessness of his problems, as she threatens to return to
Lycurgus. There follows a flashback to the Big Bittern
scene, a description of the lake itself revealing that its
depressing atmosphere had reminded Clyde of the drowning
which had been in his thoughts. The memory, made signifi
cant now by this new pressure from Roberta, prompts him to
plan (not merely consider) the drowning of Roberta as a
solution to his difficulties. By bringing the dank air of
Big Bittern into Clyde's room, Dreiser adds its dark mood to
Clyde1s troubled thoughts and thus heightens the sinister
tone of the passage.
52
The first five chapters of Book III detail the work of
the coroner, police, and district attorney as they discover
Roberta's body and fasten upon Clyde as a suspect. At the
end of chapter 5, a posse has gone out to capture him. Chap
ter 6 goes back to Clyde as he flees from Big Bittern to the
Cranston lake lodge, where he meets Sondra and spends a long
week end with her and her friends. The pathos of his throes
of guilt and his nervous fears of capture is intensified by
the reader's knowledge that the sheriff is already on his
trail. Dreiser increases the irony of the situation by re
vealing that the sheriff has already traced Clyde to a camp
ing trip to a distant lake, an outing Clyde had welcomed as
an escape from possible recognition and capture. Dreiser's
departures from chronological sequence are not frequent in
An American Tragedy, but his several flashback scenes bring
variety to the narrative and heighten its dramatic impact.
Dreiser's handling of time throughout the novel is
instrumental in creating the tension and sense of movement
necessary to sustain interest in his very long tale. The
novel covers roughly twelve years: the opening chapter
gives Clyde's age as 12; the final scene gives his nephew's
age as 7 or 8 (the boy had been born when Clyde was about
17). The manner in which Dreiser allots space to each of
these twelve years reveals his selectivity and sense of pro
portion.
Book I covers Clyde's years from 12 to 17 in just 161
pages. By far the largest portion (all that follows p. 28)
concerns his experiences after Esta runs away, a period of
about ten months during his 16th and 17th years. The pas
sage of time in Book I is handled somewhat loosely; the
episodes are seldom dated, and, except for the January set
ting in the final episode, there is little sense of the sea
sons. Concerning the length of time between episodes, Drei
ser is casual, relying on vague phrases, "very shortly af
ter" (p. 100 ), or "about a week later" (p. 106), or "later
in the same year" (p. 36). Although the vagueness of the
time references appears careless, nevertheless Dreiser is
accurate: Esta runs away in April; a "few months" later she
returns pregnant, and her child has not yet been born by the
end of the book in January. Adding up a rough estimate of
Dreiser's vague and scattered references to the passage of
months and weeks makes the ten-month span plausible.
Dreiser's selectivity and emphasis are revealed by the
great variation between the elapsed time and the number of
pages given to the various episodes. Clyde's few months
at the drug store are summarized in just 9 pages, while the
time he works at the hotel, surely little more than twice as
long, is given 117 pages. Out of this period, the four
months following his first date with Hortense are covered
in 8 pages. Thus in Book I, 111 of the 161 pages is given
to a period of less than three months of the 5 years of
elapsed time.
54
The longer dramatized passages present incidents cru
cial to Clyde's development. His first night as a bellboy/
a night which opens his eyes to a new Vorld of luxury, pleas
ure, and moral laxity, is dramatized in 13 pages, while
Esta's running away is given 8 pages. The night when his
fellow bellboys take him to dinner and to a brothel is given
14 pages. His first date with Hortense is given 6 pages,
his discovery of Esta 5 pages and his refusal of his mother
4 pages. The book closes with the outing which ends in a
fatal accident, an episode which covers 26 pages. The epi
sodes mentioned together are given a total of 75 pages, and
yet they represent a total elapsed time of less than a day
and a half. Each of these episodes is not only crucial to
the furthering of the action, but to the development (and
exposure) of'Clyde's character. The dramatized scenes are
never static; they portray a moment of crisis for Clyde,
typically the growth or deterioration of the personal rela
tionships so important to him; thus their significance is
often more emotional than physical. Dreiser's handling of
time in Book I is not as casual as it may seem.
In Book II, which spends 379 pages on a year and a
half, the passage of time is carefully noted by months, by
the seasons, and at the end of the book, by specific dates.
Despite the length of the book, the careful marking of time
and the natural progress of Roberta's pregnancy create a
sense of time moving too swiftly for Clyde. The opening
55
chapters move comparatively slowly, as Clyde finds both his
work and his life in Lycurgus disappointing and dull. The
100 pages given to the almost eventless 4 or 5 months build
a powerful impression of Clyde's almost unbearable frustra
tion as he finds his ambitious desires for social and econo
mic betterment completely unsatisfied, and sees little hope
for the future.
Then suddenly it is summer; he is promoted, Roberta
appears, and the action proceeds more rapidly. Only 40
pages later they have declared their mutual love, and in 25
more pages, 4 months have passed and they have become inti
mate. A comparison of two episodes in this period reveals
Dreiser's emphasis and selectivity. He gives 13 pages to
their two-day quarrel over the use of her room as a trysting
place, while the following 4 pages cover a two-month period
of repeated physical intimacies.
In the next chapter, it is November and Clyde's dream
girl at last becomes a real force in his life. The social
whirl in which Sondra involves him moves rapidly, until in
January, only 70 pages later, he declares his love for her.
In the next scene, it is February, and he learns that Rober
ta is pregnant. At this crisis, the action slows down, but
the press of time becomes stronger because of Roberta's
pregnancy. Fifty slow pages are given to a few episodes
from the agonizing two months during which Clyde and Rober
ta seek to interrupt her pregnancy. Then, when Roberta is
56
insisting that Clyde marry her, the action speeds up again,
as Dreiser accentuates the passing time by specifying for
the first time in the novel the actual date. After Roberta
goes home on June 10, Clyde sees Sondra on week ends, and
receives letters from both girls. Forty pages later, on
July 1, Roberta threatens to expose Clyde. When Clyde meets
her at Fonda it is July 6, and two days (and 24 pages) later,
she is dead.
While the crisis occurs early in Book II with the onset
of Roberta's pregnancy, Dreiser's skillful handling of time
carries the weight of the 130 pages of Clyde's anguish and
indecision. The time sense in the final three chapters is
especially crucial, for while Dreiser actually takes only
12 pages to describe the action at Big Bittern, the scene
appears much longer, since the 12 preceding pages devoted
to their trip to Utica and to other lakes have built an al
most unbearable suspense, which is further heightened by
the uncertainty of Clyde's mood at Big Bittern.
Book III covers a year and 7 months in 348 pages; as
in Book I, time appears less sharply defined, but as in
Book II, the tension mounts on Clyde's sense of time running
out, especially after his trial begins. The trial, which
takes almost two-fifths of the last book, is carefully
paced for dramatic effect. More than merely capitalizing on
the suspense built into the structure of any trial, Dreiser
has selected only the most dramatic moments for full cover
57
age. Castle's study notes that Dreiser edits the rather
aimless cross-examination to give it form, suspense and
dramatic climax (p. 137). The opening day of the trial, so
unnerving to Clyde, is given ten pages, while the five days
consumed in the selection of the jury are given less than
half a page.
The opening charge of the prosecution runs for 10 pages,
broken only by brief glimpses of the reactions of Clyde and
his lawyers. The prosecution continues with 127 witnesses,
the testimony of 47 of them given in brief summary, besides
two pages each of dialogue given to Mr. Alden, to a woman
who heard Roberta's last cries, and to the reading of Rober
ta's letters. The testimony section is so crowded with per
sons and with the details they report that the reader may be
amazed to discover that the two weeks of testimony has been
encompassed in just 16 pages. Belknap's reply for the de
fense, quoted in 9 pages, contrasts sharply with the district
attorney's version of Clyde's actions. Half of the trial
section, 64 pages, presents the two days Clyde spends on the
witness stand, the most dramatic and crucial portion of the
trial, culminating in Clyde's being trapped in two crucial
lies. After this dramatic climax the remainder of the trial
is swiftly summarized in 5 pages, including the testimony of
11 witnesses, the final arguments, the judge's charge to the
jury, and the jury deliberations.
Although less than one-fourth of the final book takes
58
place after the trial, the final chapters appear to take
more than that space (an effect also produced at the close
of Book II). In 70 pages Dreiser covers 14 months crowded
with events and characters significant to the still-unfold
ing story of Clyde Griffiths? his mother re-appears and in
troduces McMillan: Clyde suffers the terrors of the deaths
of his fellow prisoners, and the anguish of guilt and fears
of death. His first few crucial days in the death house are
given 16 pages, while the following five months are given
only 2 pages. Similarly the few crucial days before and
after Clyde's confession to McMillan are given 11 pages.
In Book III, as elsewhere in the novel, Dreiser gives more
space to moments of emotional, moral, or psychological cri
ses than to crises of physical action.
Then Dreiser moves swiftly to the end. In just 12
pages— encompassing Clyde's last six weeks and the failure
of his appeals— Clyde is dead. That Dreiser fails to dwell
on lurid or sordid moments is demonstrated by his giving
only a page and a half to Clyde's last day, and leaving
Clyde at the door of the execution chamber. The final scene
parallels the opening scene of the novel, but is much brief
er, just 3 pages, enough to soften but not erase the impact
of Clyde's death.
Dreiser's handling of time in An American Tragedy re
veals his selectivity, as he dwells on the most crucial and
revealing episodes of Clyde's life and telescopes the static
59
periods. The exact elapsed time is carefully marked when it
contributes to the tension of his plot; elsewhere the sense
of the passage of time is conveyed by the events. The
changes in pace and the flashback scenes create variety and
contrast in the novel.
The Proportions of the Novel
If it were a simple murder story, An American Tragedy
would be indeed, as Shafer charges, "badly proportioned"
(p. 161), since it gives so much space to events preliminary
and subsequent to the crime. Mencken treats the unity and
proportion of the novel so casually as to suggest that a
hurried reader skip Book I: "a menagerie of all Dreiser's
worst deficiencies" (Introduction, p. 11). Cargill blames
the novel's "odd proportions" on Dreiser's newspaper experi
ence, which would encourage him to give too much space to
the reporting of the trial (p. 112).
But to delete or pare down any of the three books would
weaken the novel, as Dreiser charged that the film version
had done by deleting most of Books I and III (Letters, II,
528-529). Book I establishes the structural and thematic
foundation, as it presents the experiences out of which
spring the complex motives which impell Clyde toward trage
dy: his self-concern, his sensitivity and pride, his keen
yearning for beauty and luxury. Dreiser's conscious control
of the motivation he establishes for Clyde is suggested by
60
the presence in his unpublished papers of 9 additional chap-
11
ters of Book I.
Book II shows how in less than two years in Lycurgus,
Clyde is relentlessly drawn toward the disastrous scene which
ends the book. Dreiser's sense of proportion shows in his
giving 16 pages to the final scene, while the average chap
ter in Book II is under eight pages. The length helps to
evoke the mood for tragedy: loneliness, distance from so
ciety and reality, eerie stillness.
The length of Book III may seem anti-climactic, since
over a fourth of the novel comes after the climax, when the
identity and fate of the murderer are scarcely in doubt. In
Book III, however, Dreiser does more than rehash the Gil
lette trial; he chronicles Clyde's quest for reality and
identity. In the exceptionally long chapters in which
Clyde is on the witness stand (chapter 24, 31 pages, and
chapter 25, 33 pages) against the drama of the questioning
Dreiser plays Clyde's inner struggle to sift truth from his
memory of the events. The cross-examination forces Clyde
to face questions he has not dared ask himself and to view
his actions and motives through the eyes of others. In a
grisly but telling scene as he sits in the very boat and
■^In the University of Pennsylvania collection. Chap
ter 8 of the nine, an episode from Clyde's sixth grade which
shows his persecution for his family's religious practices
is published as "Background for 'An American Tragedy'" in
Esquire, L (October 1958), 155-157.
61
touches the hairs on the camera, the horror of his deed all
but overcomes him. Clyde's visibly painful consciousness of
each turn of the screw contrasts sharply with the report of
Chester's reactions: "In court he sat slumped down in his
chair, entirely unmoved by the testimony, chewing gum most
of the time" (Pew, p. 48).
The chapters detailing the legal preparations for the
trial demonstrate the human and technical forces which mili
tate against truth and justice. Clyde is judged and con
demned but never understood by even the most perceptive in
this somewhat back-woods society. The society which so un
sympathetically convicts him actually shares in his guilt.
The prejudice and vindictiveness of the spectators, the co
ercion of a jury member, the dishonesty of the lawyers and
the falsifying of the evidence by both sides make a mock
ery of the trial. The character of the district attorney,
with his political ambitions, his hatred for Clyde's sup
posed wealth, and his fascination for the sexual aspects of
the case, illustrates the weakness of society's instruments
for justice.
In the quarter of the last book which follows the trial,
Clyde, along with other prisoners in the death house, strug
gles with guilt and terror as he searches for an understand
ing of man's existence. His personal struggle is amplified
by that of his mother and McMillan who try to help him,
without ever understanding him. By the close of the novel,
62
the drowning of Roberta Alden is overshadowed by the mystery
of life and death. As the proportions of the novel define
the significance of its events, a crime story becomes an
exploration of universal themes.
Handling of the Chapter Units
Dreiser's chapters are not a series of dramatized
scenes, a technique becoming popular in the fiction of his
time. In Crane's Maggie, for example, each chapter is a
separate impressionistic scene. The absence of transitions
between chapters with differing locales and characters sug
gests the impersonal technique of the movie camera as it
switches from one scene to another. Dreiser as omniscient
narrator maintains careful control of his story, leading
from one scene to another by careful transitions. Frequent
ly a chapter opens with a direct reference, to the events
of the preceding chapter, e.g., 1,4: "The effect of this
particular conclusion was to cause Clyde to think harder
than ever about himself" (p. 36); II, 24: "The effect of
this so casual contact was really disrupting in more senses
than one" (p. 337). Sometimes the transition is accomplish
ed by the chapter's opening with a character who has been
introduced at the close of the preceding chapter. And 11 of
the 100 chapters begin simply "And then," or "And so."
Because Dreiser as omniscient narrator keeps careful
control over his story, he can shift within the chapter from
63
one locale to another, bridging the gaps with a brief ex
planatory transition, or by having his characters think of
another person or time. Although for the most part he does
this easily, occasionally the transitions appear forced, for
example, in Book II, Dreiser begins the introduction of the
Griffiths family with Mrs. Griffiths ordering the dinner
menu. Then in order to bring in Myra he proceeds, "And the
appropriate vegetables and dessert having been decided upon,
she gave herself over to thoughts of her eldest daughter
Myra, who, having graduated from Smith College several years
before, was still unmarried" (p. 165).
The shift from one locale or set of characters to an
other leads Joseph W. Beach to complain that Dreiser's chap
ters are "chronological rag-bags rather than imaginative
12
units." Besxdes his shifts within the chapters, Dreiser
frequently spreads a single dramatic episode over two or
even three chapters, for example, Clyde enters the brothel
at the end of chapter 9, but chapter 10 is the brothel
scene; Clyde begins a date with Rita in II, 8, which laps
over into two pages of chapter 9 (See also II, 9-10; I,
17-18-19; II, 25-26). That Dreiser's scenes and episodes do
not correspond with his chapter divisions does not neces
sarily demonstrate incoherence, however. With his transi
tions, the overlapping and shifting contributes to the
12
The Twentieth Century Novel (New York, 1932), p. 329.
64
coherence of the story by scarcely ever bringing the reader
to a full stop, except between the three books (and here
Dreiser pulls the reader along with the old cliff-hanging
technique: he leaves Clyde fleeing from the accident at the
end of I, and from the drowning at the end of II).
Nor does his loose chapter structure demonstrate a
failure of Dreiser's sense of dramatic unity, for his chap
ters depend not on unity of scene or character, but on the
more subtle unity of emotional effect. For example, the
first chapter concerning Clyde's date with Rita is built on
Clyde's dubious but growing enjoyment of her deference and
admiring advances. The brief portion of the date which ap
pears in the following chapter (pp. 229-230) concerns its
inconclusive final moments as Clyde draws back, realizing
that becoming involved with her would jeopardize his social
ambitions. His reservations are strengthened by Dillard's
subsequent scheme of a weekend holiday with the girls, a
plan too risque and too expensive for Clyde; thus when he
receives his dinner invitation from the Griffiths, the
separate events of chapter 9 have led him to lose interest
in Rita and to hope for social advancement through the
Griffiths.
Similarly III, 5, a chapter which might well be "a
chronological rag-bag," is unified by the underlying, not
the overt action. In it the district attorney orders an
autopsy, travels to Utica, searches Clyde's room in Lycurgus
65
and discovers the letters; then he sends out an alarm for
Clyde. The underlying problem which unifies these events
is presented in the opening sentence: "... his thought was
running on the motive of this heinous crime— the motive"
(p. 562). Mason's contempt for Clyde is aroused by his sus
picion that Roberta might be pregnant, which accounts for
his keen interest in the autopsy. He is further incensed by
the economic and social contrast between Roberta and her
rival, as suggested by their letters:
One secretly betrayed girl in the background while he had
the effrontery to ingratiate himself into the affections
of another, this time obviously one of much higher social
position. (p. 569)
All the events in the chapter reveal the extent to which
Clyde is implicated before his capture, and reveal the de
velopment of the district attorney's vindictive attitude
through his uncovering of Clyde's motive.
Dreiser's chapters characteristically begin with expo
sition or narrative (or a combination of both), and then
perhaps after several pages, move to a dramatized scene which
ends the chapter, e.g., the chapter (I, 11) which presents
the dinner at which Clyde meets Hortense begins with two
pages of exposition describing Clyde's newly aroused hunger
for a girl of his own; three paragraphs of narrative follow,
describing Clyde's invitation to dinner at the Ratterer's;
then the dinner scene, followed by a party, is dramatized
(pp. 85-93). The chapter telling of Clyde and Roberta's
quarrel follows a similar pattern. A page of exposition,
66
largely an analysis of Clyde's restless mood, precedes a
paragraph of narrative summarizing their activities during
the fall months; then follows the scene of their quarrel
(pp. 316-321).
Even those chapters which are almost entirely dramatic
may begin with exposition rather than dialogue, e.g., II,
23, begins with an apparently dramatic scene, "And then, one
November evening as Clyde was walking along Wykeagy Avenue
. . ." (p. 331). But before Clyde accidentally meets Sondra
(p. 333), he has had time, while walking along, to think
over his present social position for a page and a half.
Even the lengthy scene (14 pages) of the Now and Then Club
dinner-dance is prefaced by a paragraph describing Clyde's
state of mind (p. 345).
That the exposition at the beginning of the chapters is
so frequently concerned with the inner state of a character
rather than with his actions reveals Dreiser's emphasis on
the emotional or psychic life rather than on the physical.
The chapter wherein Clyde meets Roberta at Crum Lake (II,
15) begins, "The thoughts of Clyde at this time in regard to
Roberta and his general situation in Lycurgus were for the
most part confused and disturbing" (p. 279). On the third
page of the chapter the scene at Crum Lake begins, but the
narrative still adds two full pages given to Clyde's thoughts
before he sees Roberta and calls to her.
Dreiser's concern with his characters' perceptions and
67
reactions belies the remark of John Berryman that the weak
ness of this novel is a "gossip interest," that the reader’s
13
only question is "And then?" Dreiser's pattern of chapter
development is illustrated in I, 3, Esta's supposed elope
ment. Here, as in several other chapters (see p. 413, p.
461, p. 636, or p. 841), the opening sentence carries the
action of the entire chapter, while the following pages ex
amine the causes and effects of the new development. Only
two of the eight pages concern Esta, a description of her
frustrations and desires for love and luxury which parallel
Clyde's own wishes. The narrative of her seduction takes
less than a page. Then follows the scene of the discovery
of her farewell note. Even the dramatized portion of the
chapter focuses on the psychological and emotional action,
as the shocked mother, with no comfort from her ineffectual
husband makes the best of the news for the sake of her chil
dren. The incident forces her and Clyde both to question the
wisdom of Providence.
Because Dreiser may place the forwarding action in ex
position rather than in dialogue, Richard Lehan concludes
that all action in the novel is "reflective" or "demonstra-
14
tive." Such is not the case, however. The action which
the exposition reports may be significantly decisive. Esta,
13
"Dreiser's Imagination," in Kazin, Stature, p.
152. 14
"Dreiser's An American Tragedy." College English,
XXV (December 1963), p. 192.
68
after all, does run away whether we see or hear her leaving.
In addition, Dreiser shows that an event may assume impor
tance as it prompts an inner event— a new insight, resolu
tion or attitude which will affect future action. Clyde's
conclusion that Esta's action demonstrates the inadequacy of
the family's religious views (p. 35) underlies his decision
to seek a new life for himself in a world removed from their
influence.
Chapter 40 in Book I"I illustrates Dreiser's typical
methods of using structure to enhance his themes and to
keep his story moving. This chapter of only 4 pages pre
sents two brief symbolic scenes. The opening sentence is
almost a topic sentence summing up the whole of the chapter:
Two incidents which occurred at this time tended still
more to sharpen the contrary points of view holding be
tween Clyde and Roberta. (p. 461)
Typically, the opening refers back to the preceding chapter:
"still more." The first incident focuses on Roberta:
One of these was no more than a glimpse which Roberta had
one evening of Clyde pausing at the Central Avenue curb in
front of the post-office to say a few words to Arabella
Stark, who in a large and impressive car, was waiting for
her father who was still in the Stark Building opposite.
And Miss Stark, fashionably outfitted according to the
season, her world and her own pretentious taste, was
affectedly posed at the wheel, not only for the benefit
of Clyde but the public in general. (p. 461)
These two sentences contain the entire overt action.
The details are vague, with Dreiser's probing the attitude
and character of Miss Stark rather than relating the specif
ic details of her dress or auto. There follow almost three
69
paragraphs describing the effect this brief scene has on
Roberta:
an epitome of all the security, luxury and freedom from
responsibility which had so enticed and hence caused
Clyde to delay and be as indifferent as possible to the
dire state which confronted her. . . . It was not right.
It was not fair. . . . (p. 461-462)
The switch to Clyde has been prepared by the opening
sentence and by the obvious transition phrase, "On the other
hand, Clyde . . ." (p. 462). His experience, given in full
er detail, covers just over three pages describing an outing
with Sondra during which Clyde stops to ask directions at an
impoverished farm house. Seeing "Titus Alden" on the mail
box, he hesitates, realizing he is at Roberta's home. The
sight of the dilapidated house and her unkempt father sicken
him, and he hurries back to Sondra's side:
But even so, and in the face of all this amazingly wonder
ful love on her part for him, the specter of Roberta and
all that she represented now with all this, was ever be
fore him. . . . (p. 465)
The scene is the culmination of the contrast between
the two worlds which beckon Clyde, and Dreiser sharpens the
contrast by juxtaposing the two scenes in this brief chap
ter. The symbolic view of the other’s world is decisive for
both Clyde and Roberta. She, convinced it is not "fair" for
him to go free into a world of luxury while she sinks into
disgrace and loneliness, comes away more determined than
ever that he must marry her. Clyde is equally determined
that never will he sink to the level of her family, that it
70
is not fair that she should thus ruin his life. The quiet
ness of the overt action in this decisive chapter illustrates
Dreiser's emphasis on reaction and perception which here
create a climax of both plot and theme.
The chapter is almost entirely narrative, interspersed
with indirect quotation of the thoughts of Clyde and Rober
ta. The only dialogue is two brief speeches of Sondra in
response first to Clyde's hesitation and then to his de
pressed mood. Her baby talk creates an ironic contrast to
the seriousness of Clyde's situation. The chapter illus
trates typical methods of Dreiser. He is not here reporting
any of the facts of the Gillette case, but he is selecting
two crucial dramatic scenes to present; he heightens the
impact by the use of juxtaposition and contrast; he uses a
small proportion of dialogue; he focuses on the inner rather
than on the overt action.
For Dreiser, the characters and details of the Gillette
case were merely suggestive, a bare framework for his vision
of youth and desire, ambition and tragedy, guilt and injus
tice, fate and death. Dreiser chose the Gillette case be
cause it embodied conflicts and themes in American life he
had long wished to treat (Letters, II, 457-458). Despite
his newspaper experience and his careful research, in the
novel he moves far from the known facts, and he ignores the
more sensational aspects of the story- in favor of the moral
and psychological. His handling of time and placement of
71
episodes demonstrates his selectivity and technical skill.
The structure of the novel contributes to its tension, vari
ety, emphasis and contrast. An American Tragedy is an imag
inatively conceived work which turns the elements of a
notorious crime into a serious work of art.
72
Sequence and Time of: Episodes
Book I
pages Episode Elapsed Time
(Date)
Total
Pages
15-27 Clyde's boyhood 4 years 13
28-35 Esta runs away few hours (April) 8
36-44 Clyde works at drug
store few months 9
45-57 Clyde hired, first
night as bellboy
1 day 13
58-67 Clyde makes friends
among bellboys
few weeks 10
68-81 Dines with friends and
visits brothel
1 evening 14
82-93 Clyde meets Hortense few weeks 11
93-98 Date with Hortense few hours 6
99-107 Courts Hortense 4 months 9
108-112 Discovers Esta few hours 5
113-132 Fur coat episode 2 weeks 20
113-136 Refuses Mother money few minutes 4
137-161 Outing and auto acci
dent
Book II
several hours
(January)
25
165-178 Lycurgus Griffiths
learn of Clyde
1 evening
(February)
14
179-189 Flashback: Clyde's life
since Kansas City
3 years 11
190-195 Flashback: Clyde meets
^ 1
2 days 6
Pages Episode Elapsed Time
(Date)
Tot;
Pag<
196-197 Flashback: Clyde given
job
few weeks (March) 2
198-211 Clyde in Lycurgus, gets
room, begins work
1 day 14
212-220 Clyde at work; makes
friends with Dillard
few weeks 9
221-229 Church social with
Rita
1 evening 9
230-247 Griffiths dinner, Son-
dra drops in
1 evening (April) 18
248-258 Clyde promoted 1 day 11
259-267 Roberta hired few weeks (June) 9
268-273 Synopsis: Roberta's
past
several years 6
274-280 Clyde attracted to
Roberta
few weeks 7
281-289 They meet at lake 1 afternoon (July) 9
290-296 Arrange date 2 days 7
297-301 First date 1 evening 5
302-309 Second date, dance several hours 8
310-314 Roberta gets new room six weeks
(September)
5
315-327 Quarrel 2 days (October) 13
328-331 Repeated intimacies 2 months 4
332-337 Meets Sondra 1 evening
(November)
6
338-344 Invited to dance by
Sondra's friends
few weeks 7
345-359 Dinner dance with Sondra 1 evening
(December 4)
15
74
Pages
360-365
366-372
373-381
382-387
388-393
394-399
400-407
408-418
419-422
423-428
429-441
442-445
445-454
455-461
462-465
466-469
470-478
479-488
489-493
Episode
Breaks date with Roberta
for society party
Exchange gifts with
Roberta
Roberta home for holiday
Flashback; Clyde asked
to Griffiths dinner
Clyde reaffirms love
for Roberta
Clyde has chocolate in
Finchley kitchen
Clyde learns Roberta is
pregnant
Clyde gets drugs for
Roberta
Urges Roberta to see
doctor
Gets name of doctor
Doctor refuses abortion
Second visit to doctor
Roberta suggests
marriage
Sondra hints at
marriage
Contrast scenes
Roberta goes home
Letters from both girls;
reads of drowning
Week end with Sondra
Letters from Roberta
Elapsed Time Total
(Date) Pages
1 evening 6
(December 22)
2 hours 7
(December 23)
3 days 9
2 days 6
(December 25)
1 evening 6
1 evening 6
(January)
1 day 8
(February)
2 days 11
t
10 days 4
1/2 hour 6
1 hour 13
few weeks (March) 4
1 evening 9
few weeks (May) 6
few minutes 7
few days (June 10) 4
1 evening (June 12) 9
2 days (June 14) 10
1 day (June 16) 4
75
Pages Episode Elapsed Time
(Date)
Total
Pages
494-499 Flashback: Big Bittern 1 day (June 15) 6
500-506 Temptation scene 1 evening
■»
7
507-509 Roberta threatens 1 evening (July
1)
3
510-517 Joins Roberta on train few hours (July
6) 8
518-521 Travel toward Big
Bittern
1 day (July 7) 9
522-533 Roberta drowns
Book III
few hours (July 8) 12
537-552 Coroner gets body 1 day (July 9) 16
553-562 District attorney sees
Aldens
few hours (July 10) 10
563-570 Search of Clyde's room few hours (July
11)
8
571-595 Flashback: Clyde flees
to Sondra
3 days 25
596-615 Capture and questioning several hours
(July 12)
20
616-619 Clyde in jail 1 day (July 13) 4
620-622 Forced to scene 1 day (July 17) 3
623-631 Reactions of Aldens,
Griffiths, press
few days 9
632-636 Griffiths hire lawyers few hours 4
637-654 Clyde questioned by
lawyers
few days 18
655-661 Jephson concocts false
story for Clyde
1 hour 7
662-678 Clyde indicted few weeks
(August 5)
17
679-688 Trial opens 1 day (October 15) 10
Pages
689-698
699-715
716-724
725-755
756-788
789-803
804-815
816-821
822-831
832-833
834-840
841-846
847-857
858-859
860-868
869-871
872-874
76
Episode
Opening charge
Witnesses, Roberta's
letters
Defense plea
Jephson questions
Clyde
Cross-examination of
Clyde
Clyde convicted; sends
for Mother
Clyde sentenced
Death house, Mother
visits
Cutrone executed
Nicholson executed
McMillan visits
Clyde questions self
Letter from Sondra;
Clyde confesses
Appeal fails
Appeal to governor;
conversion statement
Clyde executed
San Francisco street
meeting
Elapsed Time
(Date)
few hours
(October 20)
10 days
(October 30)
few hours
several hours
1 1/2 days
few days
few days
(December 10)
few days
few days
(December 19)
5 months (May)
1 hour
several weeks
few days (July)
several months
(January 19)
5 weeks
1 day
few hours
(3 years later)
Total
Pages
10
17
9
31
33
15
12
10
2
7
6
11
2
3
CHAPTER III
DREISER AS LITERARY ARTISTs VIEWPOINT
That Dreiser's craftsmanship has been largely ignored
is demonstrated by the scarcity of close textual studies of
his works. Perhaps the tacit assumption that his narrative
technique could not bear close analysis is, to some degree,
true. But the blunders in his style and the occasional
flaws in his technique should not blind the perceptive read
er to the considerable literary craftsmanship he displays as
he takes the bare facts of the Gillette story and turns them
into a massive, haunting novel. His control of viewpoint
and his psychological characterization in An American Trage
dy deserve critical attention— and praise.
The Omniscient Author
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Dreiser was not an
experimenter with viewpoint. When the literary fashion of
the day had become "dramatic objectivity,"^ in An American
Tragedy, as in earlier novels, he uses the old-fashioned con
vention of the omniscient author. He carefully and obvious
ly controls his story, commenting on the significance of
^Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago,
1961), p. 198.
77
78
events, entering the minds of any of his characters, and
displaying his judgment of the actions and thoughts of his
characters. Although the novel opens as if seen by a de
tached observer, the narrator soon exposes the attitudes of
the Griffiths family members and then moves to explore their
large audiences
Some were interested or moved sympathetically by the
rather tame and inadequate figure of the girl at the or
gan, others by the impractical and materially inefficient
texture of the father. . . . (p. 16)
From a brief report of Clyde's uncomfortable air, the narra
tor turns to explain:
Indeed the home life of which this boy found himself a
part and the various contacts, material and psychic, which
thus far had been his, did not tend to convince him of the
reality and force of all that his mother and father
seemed so certainly to believe and say. (p. 17)
Despite the flexibility of the omniscient convention,
Dreiser keeps his main character firmly in the center of the
action: Clyde is on stage during 82.4 per cent of the novel
(Castle, p. 155). In addition, frequently the action is
presented through Clyde's eyes, in the manner of James. If
so, why would not the first-person narrative, or the exclu
sively limited focus have served Dreiser as well? Had Clyde
told his own story, it would have lacked the irony and the
psychological exploration which Dreiser as omniscient nar
rator brings to the tale. Had Dreiser confined himself to
Clyde's angle of vision, he would have lost the parallels of
character and theme, the complexity and the contrast which
79
the omniscient convention allows.
To begin with his faults, however: at times Dreiser
overplays the role of the all-seeing author, and very nearly
suggests that he has a non-seeing reader. Though his earli-
' *"' 2
er novels are more annoying in this respect, even in An
American Tragedy he frequently over-explains, underscoring
an already obvious point rather than letting his characters
and events speak for themselves. As if the contrast between
the letters from Roberta and Sondra were not transparently
clear, Dreiser must spell it out:
. . . their respective missives maintaining the same rela
tive contrast between ease and misery, gayety of mood and
the somberness of defeat and uncertainty. (p. 479)
Samuel Griffiths* ringing speech, as he underwrites Clyde's
defense speaks for itself, but Dreiser adds his typical
underscoring:
And turning and slowly and heavily moving toward the rear
staircase, while Smilie, wide-eyed, gazed after him in
awe. The power of him! The decision of him! The fair
ness of him in such a deadly crisis I And Gilbert equally
impressed, also sitting and staring. His father was a
man, really. He might be cruelly wounded and distressed,
but, unlike himself, he was neither petty nor revengeful,
(p. 634)
Dreiser also insists too much on the part which Clyde's
2
A most flagrant violation of the convention is Drei
ser 1 s attributing to a character a virtue he is not shown to
have, e.g., the sensitive, passionate artist, Witla, is a
feverish foolish palaverer in his love making: "Flower Face,
Myrtle Bloom! Angel Eyes! Divine Fire!" (The "Genius",
p. 534). Again, the reader looks in vain for evidence of
Witla*s wit (See, for example, p. 523).
80
previous romantic failures play in his callous pressure on
the reluctant Roberta. First Dreiser presents Clyde's
thoughts during their quarrels
All this, as he saw it, smacked of that long series of de
feats which had accompanied his attentions to Hortense
Briggs. (p. 320)
Then he reiterates a half page later: "(it was his experi
ence with Hortense and Rita that was prompting him to this
attitude)" (p. 320). The point, in fact, does not hold up
under such insistence, since at the time of the accident
which separated them, Clyde was possessed of Hortense's
promise, and it was he who had broken off with Rita. Al
though Clyde might twist these experiences to his own pur
poses, Dreiser ought not to do so. But fortunately, such
weaknesses are not frequent in An American Tragedy, and they
are overshadowed by the generally effective use of authori
al vision and comment to enhance character and theme.
Distance and Control
Dreiser's control of his viewpoint in An American Trag
edy, with his sympathetic commentary and reliable narration
of the story of Clyde Griffiths, escapes the fault of some
of his earlier novels, especially The Titan and The Finan
cier, which are seriously marred by a contradiction between
the attitude of the author-narrator and the author-commenta
tor. While the narrator apparently admires the ruthlessness
of Cowperwood, his "nerve, ideas, agressiveness" (The Finan-
81
cier. p. 78) the author-commentator is less admiring. While
he hints that no law exists "outside of subtle will and pow
er of the individual to achieve" (p. 141), yet he predicts a
tragic end for his hero: "And sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. . . .
What wise man might not read from such a beginning, such an
end?" (p. 503). These, the final words of the novel, are a
disconcerting contrast to the attitude which the author-
narrator has maintained. In An American Tragedy, both nar
rator and commentator are closer to the central figure, and
present him and his world with sympathy and consistency.
The closeness of the narrator to his central figure not
only helps create sympathy for this rather non-heroic hero,
but allows his character to be unfolded without disconcer
ting gaps. The gradual development of his ideas, motives
and values is demonstrated. Dreiser does not fall back on
the flawed technique of his earlier novels where a charac
ter's "natural" bent or trait appears for the first time
well along in the novel. For example, Witla's early ambi
tions are entirely materialistic:
He felt an eager desire to tear wealth and fame from the
bosom of the world. Life must give him his share. If it
did not he would curse it to his dying day. (The "Gen
ius," p. 150)
But the reader suddenly is told on p. 689 that this man is
by "temperament" attracted to metaphysics, and in fact that
"all his life" he had been speculating on "the subtleties of
mortal existence" and reading philosophy "at odd moments"
(presumably between Ruby, Angela, Christina, Frieda, Carlot-
ta, and Suzanne). In contrast, when Clyde changes, he does
not suddenly sprout a new characteristic, nor leap from one
set of interests and values to another, for his conscience
and sensitivity are revealed as they grow.
The narrator establishes the values of the world in
which his characters move. Sometimes his judgments are im
plicit in descriptions of character: e.g., Esta's lover is
one of those vain, handsome, animal personalities, all
clothes and airs, but no morals (no taste, no courtesy or
real tenderness even). . . . (p. 30)
The narrator's values do not always echo those of his char
acters. While Clyde sees the hotel lobby as "gorgeous," to
the narrator it is "too richly furnished," in a "gauche
luxury of appointment" (p. 42) . The hotel atmosphere, so
attractive to Clyde, is described as "most dangerous" to the
young boy because it is "materially affected and gaudy"
(p. 58).
The contrast between the narrator's vision and that of
his characters in part explains the apparent weakness of the
characterization of Sondra. It is a commonplace of criti
cism that skilled as Dreiser is at bringing to life a host
of characters, he fails to make vivid the appeal of the
baby-talking Sondra Finchley (see, for example, Matthiessen,
pp. 197-198). Too often overlooked is the fact that it is
Clyde who is captivated by Sondra, not Dreiser, for he sees
and exposes her artificiality and shallowness. The authori-
83
al descriptions are cruelly revealing: "Sondra leaned back
after her best princess fashion" (p. 336). Dreiser’s cen
sure is clear as he characterizes her as "a seeking Aphro
dite" (p. 350). Critics who sneer at the lack of glamour in
her baby-talk should note that Clyde fondly calls her his
baby girl, and that the narrator explains that her baby-talk
(actually only occasional) appears charming to Clyde:
When Clyde appeared to be the least reduced in mind she
most affected this patter with him, since it had an almost
electric, if sweetly tormenting effect on him. (p. 465)
Her weaknesses serve to expose Clyde's flaws.
Dreiser's handling of her character demonstrates his
control of distance. Although he freely enters the minds of
many less-important characters, as it serves his purposes,
he seldom exposes Sondra's thoughts, and then only to re
veal her in self-centered or idle calculations. While it
may be true that her shallowness precludes the deep inner
probing given to Roberta (to use an obvious contrast), the
distance from which we view Sondra helps keep her in the
proper perspective. We see only enough of her to under
stand (not to share) Clyde's passion for her; but we are
never allowed to travel so far with her as to lose interest
in the major conflicts of the story. As Booth points out,
some characters best serve the requirements of fiction by
being seen from a distance "in order to prevent too much
identification" (p. 282). Sondra is such a character, and
we are never allowed to forget that An American Tragedy is
84
Clyde's story, not hers.
Expectation and Irony
The omniscient viewpoint allows the narrator to struc
ture his tale so as to increase its dramatic suspense. In
II, 25, for example, the narrator describes first Clyde's
thoughts concerning Roberta, pp. 279-281, ending with his
enjoyment of canoeing as a diversion from his frustrations.
The next paragraph relates that Roberta and a friend fre
quently gather flowers at Crum Lake. Thus the reader is led
to anticipate their meeting. But Dreiser builds the tension
by switching back to Clyde, now rowing about on the lake
feeling lonely and dreaming of Roberta. Three pages later
he sees a pretty girl on the bank— Roberta.
The narrator's intruded comments may heighten the ex
pectation of tragedy. Roberta's room is described as "so
much more of a Paradise than either might ever know again.
. ." (p. 329). Similarly the omniscient author raises the
tension of the trial by an ominous revelation about the
jury:
And with but one exception, all religious, if not moral,
and all convinced of Clyde's guilt before ever they sat
down, but still . . . convinced that they could pass
fairly and impartially on the facts presented to them.
(p. 689)
Clyde's struggle to lie successfully in court becomes
fraught with dramatic irony and pathos as the omniscient
narrator reveals that his efforts are in vain:
85
It was Roberta who in Utica had suggested some of the lakes
north of there. It was there in the hotel, not at the
railway station, that he had secured some maps and fold
ers— a fatal contention in one sense, for Mason had one
folder with a Lycurgus House stamp on the cover, which
Clyde had not noticed at the time. And as he was so tes
tifying Mason was thinking of this.(p. 746)
From the outset, ironies add to the foreboding of trag
edy in the novel. The omniscient narrator can portray
Clyde's silent but dangerous inner rebellion after the
street meeting, along with his unperceptive father's optimi
stic remark, "They seemed more attentive than usual" (p. 21).
When Samuel Griffiths assures his family that Clyde "wouldn't
be coming down here with any notion that he was to be placed
on an equal footing with any of us" (p. 178), the reader al
ready knows that Clyde entertains exactly such notions.
An ominous weakness in the love between Clyde and
Roberta emerges in the contrast between their thoughts af
ter their quarrel. Roberta, who sees the relationship as
exclusively personal, thinks only of Clyde and of the im
portance of his love to her (pp. 321-323). Clyde thinks of
Roberta as another troublesome girl (pp. 323-324), and
later views his conquest of her as a sign of his power over
women in general.
Through the omniscient viewpoint Dreiser amplifies the
discrepancy between appearance and reality, adding depth
to his theme of illusion. Thus Clyde, while feeling flat
tered by the apparently sincere admiration of a prostitute
and observing her with sympathy, is actually being patron-
86
ized by a skilled professional:
She looked rather solemnly at the floor, thinking mainly
of the little experienced dunce Clyde was— so raw and
green. (p. 80)
By looking into all the characters' minds, Dreiser can un
cover the ironies of human deceit:
For the major portion of the return trip to Kansas City,
there was nothing to mar the very agreeable illusion under
which Clyde rested. He sat beside Hortense who leaned her
head against his shoulder. And although Sparser, . . .
had squeezed her arm and received an answering and prom
ising look, Clyde had not seen that. (p. 152)
Earlier, Clyde's selfish refusal of his mother's plea for
money for Esta is made bitterly ironic by his mother's poign
ant sympathy for him:
His mother sighed, thinking of the misery of having to
fall back on her one son thus far. And just when he was
trying to get a start, too. What would he think of all
this in after years? . . . And for the most part it was so
easy to excite him— to cause him to show tenseness and
strain— as though he were not so very well fitted for
either. And it was she, because of Esta and her husband
and their joint and unfortunate lives, that was and had
been heaping the greater part of this strain on him.
(pp. 135-136)
Psychological Focus
Dreiser's heavy use of the omniscient convention for
the psychological probing of both major and minor characters
is one of the strengths of his superb characterization.
Critics have often praised Dreiser's skill at creating char
acter. Kern cites as one of Dreiser's more obvious beauties
his ability
to create a convincingly real world peopled with human
characters, to project their emotions with a power that
87
engages our affections. (p. 135)
George Mayberry puts Dreiser's characterization at the head
of his virtues:
almost alone of our novelists he produced books that are
broadly conceived, minutely executed, large in theme and
peopled with dimensional characters— "cut them and they
bleed."3
What has frequently not been recognized, however, is
the extent to which Dreiser's characters depend on intro
spective revelation for their life and appeal. Rahv, who
erroneously cites Dreiser as the best American example of
naturalism, apparently overlooks Clyde Griffiths when he
complains that "such a perspective allows for very little
self-awareness on the part of the characters" (p. 133). The
inner focus of An American Tragedy separates it from the
usually superficial naturalistic novels (and from Dreiser's
own earlier novels).
Mark Schorer notes that since naturalism was too often
4
limited to "undefined social experience," modern fiction
needed a technique that would discover:
the complexity of the modern spirit, the difficulty of
personal morality, and the fact of evil— all the untrac-
table elements under the surface which a technique of the
surface alone cannot approach. (p. 82)
3
"Dreiser: 1871-1945," New Republic, CXIV (January 14,
1946), 56.
4
"Technique As Discovery," in John W. Aldridge, ed.,
Critiques and Essays on Modern Fiction (New York, 1952),
p. 80.
88
That Dreiser can deal so powerfully with these very elements
in An American Tragedy is largely due to his delving below
the realistic surface into the psychic subsoil.
Yet in discussing the psychological trend of twentieth
century fiction, "its inward turning," Leon Edel rightly
5
does not include Dreiser. Despite the psychological focus
in An American Tragedy, it is not a psychological novel;
compared with the works of Joyce or Faulkner, for example,
it seldom deals with the life of the senses or with symbolic
experience, and it makes no extended use of the pure stream-
of-consciousness technique. In addition, as he explores the
inner world, Dreiser never loses sight of the solid external
world. Despite occasional inconsistencies and fumblings in
technique, An American Tragedy gives, I think, the best of
the two worlds.
Critics are divided on Dreiser's skill in presenting
psychological states. A grossly inaccurate reading of the
novel by Kenneth S. Lynn apparently ignores all of Clyde's
troubled thoughts to conclude:
his soul is ice cold. . . . He can lie to his parents with
complete cold-bloodedness. . . . The romance in An Ameri
can Tragedy is an utterly heartless business.6
^The Psychological Novel: 1900-1950 (New York, 1955),
p. 7.
g
The Dream of Success (Boston, 1955), pp. 63-66. Al
most any line of p. 301 of the novel refutes Lynn: "There
was a sob— half of misery, half of delight— in her voice and
Clyde caught that. He was so touched by her honesty and
simplicity that tears sprang to his own eyes."
89
Hoffman argues that Dreiser's "fundamental crudity of mind"
prevents him from creating "inner subtlety of character"
(Modern Novel, p. 51). Even the generally Treliable Matthies-
sen writes that Dreiser "has little of the psychologists'
skill in portraying the inner life of his characters"
(p. 85); his chapter on An American Tragedy concludes that
its psychological import is insignificant compared to its
period interest:
Clyde's whole experience was too undifferentiated, too un
illumined to compel the attention of some readers already
habituated to the masterpieces of the modern psychological
novel. But for young men growing up in the 'twenties and
'thirties here was a basic account of the world to which
they were exposed. (p. 210)
Other critics fortunately oppose such views. Grant C.
Knight: "Dreiser is more important as a psychological
7
novelist than American criticism has yet conceded." Eliza
beth A. Drew: "an inexhaustible, patient curiosity about the
p
mysterious mental and emotional processes." Edward Wagen-
knecht: "He was never greater than when probing the degree
9
of guilt in Clyde's mind." Beach:
Dreiser's realism does not exhaust itself upon the general
outlines of action and motivation . There is plenty left
over for the minutest details of psychology. (p. 325)
7
The Strenuous Age in American Literature (Chapel Hill,
1954), p. 37.
Q
The Modern Novel (New York, 1926), p. 146.
9
Cavalcade of the American Novel (New York, 1952),
p. 290.
90
Through the omniscient viewpoint Dreiser reveals facets
of character and motive which would otherwise be hidden from
view, as the case of Clyde's mother shows. Her son sees her
as a loving and sympathetic person, entirely misguided by an
unrealistic religious faith; the lawyers and reporters see
her as sincere but fanatical, hopelessly gauche. Only the
omniscient narrator can illuminate the complexity of her
character as she faces the most painful events and tries to
square them with her beliefs; only a probing of her mind can
reveal her strength of character and the validity of her
love as she suffers for the condemned son who yet rejects
her in part. The striking but brief chapter in which Clyde
and Roberta get a symbolic glimpse of each other's worlds
could not have been presented by a first-person narrator or
through a limited focus. Nor could the effect of the scene
on their attitudes have been uncovered by the detached ob
server .
Technique for Introspective Revelation
Dreiser occasionally presents Clyde's inner life by a
description of his feelings, e.g., "He felt a wonder of
something— he could not tell what" (p. 301). Usually, how
ever, Dreiser relies on indirect quotation of his charac
ters ' thoughts:
And that he did care for her (yes, he did), although now—
basking in the direct rays of this newer luminary— he
could scarcely see Roberta any longer, so strong were the
actinic rays of this other. Was he all wrong? Was it
91
evil to be like this? (p. 345)
Unlike the stream of consciousness, the indirect quotation
(with little sacrifice of immediacy) permits the author to
edit and concentrate passages of thought, and to move from
thought to speech or action without changing focus.
Apparently, however, Dreiser feared that the indirect
technique was not adequate for presenting Clyde's deepest
crisis, for in the last three chapters of Book II, he uses
two other techniques, and not, I think, entirely successful
ly. As Clyde and Roberta separately board a train at Fonda
and ride to Utica, the action takes place almost entirely in
Clyde's mind (only five paragraphs are devoted to Roberta's
thoughts). The indirect quotations, as Clyde plots and de
bates Roberta's drowning, are interspersed with italicized
sentences enclosed in parentheses. Apparently Dreiser wish
es to present the irrelevant and subconscious ideas breaking
into Clyde's thoughts, but the result is confusing since the
italicized interjections are not consistent. At times they
present Clyde's perceptions of the physical action, but the
action also appears in the indirect quotations. While the
indirect discourse is devoted primarily to Clyde's plotting,
his plotting may also appear in the italicized portions:
"(Oh, the grimness and the terror of this plan! Could he
really execute it?)1 1 (p. 515). While at first reading the
result may be effective enough to suggest the uncontrolled
movement of the mind, and to contrast the placid countryside
92
with Clyde's dark thought, on closer reading, the lack of
consistency brings confusion. Fortunately Dreiser uses the
technique nowhere else in the novel.
Dreiser's search for a technique to present the mysteri
ous and turbulent inner world leads him to dramatize Clyde's
temptation symbolically, almost parabolically, not unlike
the temptation of Christ by the Devil in the New Testament.
Book II, 45, presents a dialogue between a protesting Clyde
and a tempting voice, described variously as "the genii of
his darkest and weakest side" (p. 501), "the dark personali
ty" (p. 503), "the voice" (p. 504), "the Giant Efrit" and
"the Efrit of his own darker self" (p. 509). The tempting
voice would make a more convincing and effective represent
ative of evil had Dreiser not given it a separate person
ality which makes its speeches annoyingly melodramatic:
Behold, I bring you a way. It is the way of the lake—
Pass Lake (p. 501).
I have truly pointed out to you and in all helpfulness the
only way— the only way— It is a long lake. (pp. 503-504)
The weakness of the technique and its incongruity of tone
betray themselves painfully during the drowning, when upon
Roberta's falling into the water, "the voice at his ear"
(p. 531) suggests Clyde swim away and let her drown.
The voice does not speak again in the novel, and in the
following paragraphs, Clyde's mental state is more success
fully revealed through indirect quotation:
And then Clyde, with the sound of Roberta's cries still in
93
his ears, that last frantic, white, appealing look in her
eyes, swimming heavily, gloomily and darkly to shore. And
the thought that, after all, he had not really killed her.
No, no. Thank God for that. He had not. And yet (step
ping up on the near-by bank and shaking the water from his
clothes) had he? Or, had he not? For had he not refused
to go to her rescue, and when he might have saved her, and
when the fault for casting her in the water, however acci
dentally, was so truly his? And yet— and yet— (p. 532)
In presenting Clyde's final mental struggles over his
guilt and his fears of death, Dreiser wisely uses the in
direct discourse (pp. 841-847). And in Clyde's deepest
moments of contrition, when he hears a voice, it is not that
of a genii, but of a fellow convict whom Clyde joins in a
universal religious chant:
I have been evil. I have been unkind. I have lied. Ohi
OhI Ohi I have been unfaithful. My heart has been
wicked. I have joined with those who have done evil
things. Ohi Ohi Ohi I have been false. I have been
cruel. I have sought to murder. . . . (p. 849)
Such an objectification of an inner state is more in keep
ing with the realistic technique of the novel than is the
artificial "voice." Dreiser's presentation of the inner
life is convincing when most simple, in the indirect quota
tion, not in his infrequent gropings for another technique.
Complexities in Characterization
The omniscient viewpoint allows Dreiser to create
subtlety of character in his broad sweep across levels of
society. Scarcely a class or profession is not included:
the managers and their assistants, the lowest clerks and
factory hands, lawyers and a doctor, a barber and court
94
officials, deputies, guards and convicts, reporters and an
editor, a farmer and a minister, American and foreign types,
drudges and pleasure seekers.
Yet Dreiser is not content with stock figures. The
lawyers range in ability, integrity and sensitivity. Belk
nap is understanding, but Jephson is more clever; both are
sensitive, while Catchuman, for all his shrewdness, lacks
the sympathy to win Clyde's confidence. The district attor
ney is vicious, impatient to convict Clyde; yet despite his
illegal moves, he has a kind of morality, since he truly be
lieves that Clyde is guilty and deserving of punishment.
Clyde's own lawyers, who work so diligently on his behalf,
actually act against their own better knowledge, as they
believe him to be guilty. Nicholson, so helpful to Clyde,
has murdered a wealthy client for his money.
The society girls are not all cut from one mold. Myra
Griffiths, sober and spinsterish at twenty-six, contrasts
with her vivacious, friendly sister. Gertrude Trumball is
frank and cynical, but cordial to Clyde, where Bertine Cran
ston is "involved, insincere, and sly" (p. 348). None of
these girls has Sondra's unique flair and glamour. Nor are
the factory girls all alike, from the sensitive Roberta to
the earthy Flora Brandt, or gay Polish Mary. Even the reli
gionists differ: the fumbling Asa Griffiths is as unlike
McMillan as Mrs. Griffiths is unlike Grace Marr.
Dreiser's omniscient view of psychological states
95
allows the contrasts of viewpoint which add complexity to
the novel. In Book III, for example, the question of Clyde's
guilt and its implications is filtered through three minds.
Clyde himself wavers between contrition and self-justifica
tion :
. . . he had a feeling in his heart that he was not as
guilty as they all seemed to think. . . . How could they
judge him, these people, all or any of them, even his own
mother, when they did not know what his own mental, physi
cal and spiritual suffering had been? . . . While at times
he felt strongly that he was innocent, at others he felt
that he must be guilty. (p. 857)
Sympathetic as McMillan is, he fails to be understanding of
Clyde's motives:
In those dark days, alas, as Mr. McMillan saw it, he
[Clyde] was little more than a compound of selfishness
and unhallowed desire and fornication against the evil of
which Paul had thundered. (p. 856)
Mrs. Griffiths, with as rigid a moral code as McMillan's,
hopes for Clyde's innocence:
. . . she was staggered by the thought that perhaps, after
all, Clyde was as guilty as at first she had feared.
(p. 864)
Even more subtle is the variety of actions and motives
which the omniscient narrator can reveal within the individ
ual. Dreiser says, "All individuals are a bundle of con
tradictions— none more so than the most capable" (The Fin
ancier, p. 90). Though Clyde is often tender and gentle,
he can also be brutal, as seen in his treatment of Roberta.
She herself exhibits contradictory behavior. Although ex
tremely fond of her mother, in her intimacy with Clyde she
96
knowingly opens the way to disgrace and heartache for her
mother. Although she insists that Clyde must give their
child a name, she was, at first, as eager as he for an abor
tion which would have killed the child. Usually a quiet
person, she threatens Clyde with an exposure which would
disgrace not only him, but herself, her family, and her
child.
Dreiser's statement in Hey 1 Rub-a-dub-dubthat "man in
all his relations is neither good nor evil, but both" is
illustrated clearly by Clyde and Roberta. Another example
is the Clyde/Sondra relationship. Sondra herself, although
never vicious, is selfish. When she takes Clyde up as a
lark, she never considers what a social fling could mean to
a poor but aspiring young man. As she deliberately feeds
his growing ardor in order to enjoy her power, she becomes
increasingly dependent upon his devotion. Yet her promises
and affections are never given to meet his need, for she
realizes she cannot match his passion:
Sondra was decidedly moved, as well as flattered by the
thought that she was able to evoke in Clyde so eager and
headlong a passion. He was so impetuous— so blazing now
with a flame of her own creating, as she now felt, yet
which she was incapable of feeling as much as he, as she
knew. . . . (p. 485)
Although practical enough to see Clyde covertly so as not to
arouse her mother's opposition, Sondra still does not
^(New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), p. 272. All
references are to this edition.
97
clearly consider the future. Like Clyde (and Roberta) she
is given to "nebulous and yet strengthening and lengthening
fantasies" (p. 456).
Clyde also shows a mixture of good and evil motives.
Plainly he worships Sondra's beauty and vivaciousness. The
narrator carefully notes that Clyde's desire for her is with
out lust. Even when Sondra apparently ignores him after his
arrest, he protects her name, makes no appeal to her for
help, and grieves over the heartache he has caused her. Yet
while he pursues this almost hallowed love, he fathers Ro
berta's child, and when threatened with exposure, he thinks
only of his own loss of romance and wealth, not the possible
hurt to Sondra. Clyde even tells himself that his plot to
drown Roberta was "all for her" [Sondra], where plainly it
was all for himself. Never does he ask himself what he of
fers Sondra, but thinks only of what she brings to him.
Although Sherman charges that in a Dreiser novel a
character never changes, "He acquires naught from his ex
perience but sensations" ("The Naturalism. . . ," p. 652),
such a statement is far from true of Clyde Griffiths^ and
other characters in An American Tragedy. The immature,
aspiring Esta returns from her elopement a sober and chasten
ed girl. Roberta, at the outset a pliable, dreamy girl,
under stress of her pregnancy and Clyde's neglect, becomes
11 , .
See below, pp. 191-196.
98
determined, defiant and practical. Even the unrealistic
Sondra is prompted by her danger to act prudently to protect
her family.
The complexity of a whole host of characters is also
suggested by the subtleties of motivation which the omnis
cient narrator can uncover. The strength of various moti
vating forces, far from being simple mechanisms, differs
from person to person, and within one person from time to
time. Hortense clearly values Clyde only for his presents,
while Roberta craves his sincere devotion; the lavish toilet
set he gives her at Christmas does not satisfy her. Clyde
notes the difference between the values of the frequenters
of the two hotels: the flashy Green-Davidson with its air of
blatant luxury and pleasure, where sexual activity motivates
all phases of life; the Union League Club, solid and pros-
. s"
perous, with an air of quiet seriousness and achievement,
and no hint of sex. The strong sensual desires and material
ambitions which plague Clyde are not shared by all the
characters; the narrator notes that his mother, McMillan,
and the governor had never felt the searing desires which
drive Clyde.
Clyde's response to Dillard's offer of friendship re
veals the conflicts in his motives. While he is desperately
lonely, and finds Dillard likeable, he is cautious. He
fears that Dillard may be beneath his station, although his
patronizing is flattering. Clyde sees in Dillard also a
99
chance to meet some agreeable girls, but he fears that Dil
lard's fun might be too risque, and that any entanglement
might prove too expensive. Fearing that social activity
about town in lesser circles will threaten his advancement
with the socially elite, he soon drops Dillard. Sondra's
interest in sports also springs from mixed motives: her
enjoyment of exercise, her sociability, her love of display
and her competitive spirit (p. 358).
Relationships and Inter-relationships
Dreiser's characters achieve dimension through being
related to one another in a series of contrasts and paral
lels. Dreiser had used this technique in Sister Carrie and
Jennie Gerhardt where he set up one character against
another. The omniscient convention allows for a probing of
the actions and motives of the minor characters which cre
ates a reflection of the major characters. Hortense's self
ishness is a parallel to Clyde's, his intense yearning for
her a parallel to Roberta's unrequited love for him. Clyde's
willingness to drift without considering the future is re
flected in Roberta; both knowingly act against discretion,
convention, family and morals, endangering both Clyde's
career and her reputation.
Sometimes the reflections add to the plausibility.
Clyde's intense desire for social advancement is shared by
those around him; those friendly to him in Lycurgus are im
100
pressed by his supposed wealth and position. Even Roberta's
romantic dreams are touched by "the most stirring and grandi
ose illusions in regard to Clyde's local material and so
cial condition ..." (p. 321). Clyde's unwise involvement
with her is reflected by Sondra's indiscreet interest in one
beneath her station. His attempts to enjoy Roberta's love
while avoiding the responsibilities of marriage are paral
leled by Sondra's wish to exercise her charms without en
tanglement.
Like the contrast between the two worlds they repre
sent, there is an obvious contrast between Roberta and Son
dra. The contrast is more subtle, however, than that in
Jennie Gerhardt which pits Jennie, a warm, generous, uncon
ventional poor girl against Lettie, a cool, wealthy, and
correct society woman— with all the appealing qualities
belonging to Jennie. Here the two girls are not opposites,
but different individuals. Both have beauty of form and
spirit, each in her own way. Roberta is sweet and yielding;
she can give adoration and devotion. Sondra has the sparkle
of unlimited vitality and effervescence; the challenge of
her glamour creates an enticing excitement which Roberta can
never match. The parallels and contrasts add weight and
complexity to Dreiser's characterization; the parallels may
increase the plausibility of action, while the contrasts
suggest the incongruities and contradictions of life.
The omniscient viewpoint also aids Dreiser in creating
101
a complex of inter-relationships among his characters. Kazin
cites as Dreiser's greatest strength his ability to drama-
12
tize human relations. Dudley characterizes Dreiser as
"the novelist of human relationships" (p. 469). Lewisohn
writes, "He can take clay and mold men; he can create the
relations between them ..." (Expression, pp. 481-482).
Clyde is enmeshed in a variety of relationships; only
gradually does he realize their significance to himself and
to others. In the extremity of his tragedy he begins to
comprehend the richness of his mother's love for him. Even
before Roberta's pregnancy Clyde senses that their relation
ship has become so important to her that he would injure her
greatly by leaving her. At his trial he realizes how that
relationship has affected the lives of her parents and sis
ter. After his conviction he realizes the injury and sorrow
he has brought into dozens of lives.
McMillan's attempts tq help Clyde involve him in a
relationship that touches him deeply. When Clyde confesses,
McMillan feels the horror and responsibility of deciding on
Clyde's guilt.
And Clyde was left to brood on all he had said— and how it
had affected McMillan, as well as himself. His new
friend's stricken mood. The obvious pain and horror with
which he viewed it all. (p. 855)
Nicholson points out to Clyde that the sanity of the entire
12
Introduction, An American Tragedy (New York, 1959),
p. 14.
102
death house depends on the courage each man shows, for the
benefit of the others (p. 826).
The importance of unspoken dialogue, which the omnis
cient author can place in so many minds, adds to the complex
ity and humanity of the characters. Dreiser never matches
the subtlety of James, whose characters seem to catch the
beauties of unspoken nuances which may float past the read
er, for Dreiser must always spell out what his characters
think and feel. Nevertheless the technique effectively
deepens his portrayal of character and life in many crucial
scenes. It offers a contrast to those ironic scenes where
the thoughts of one character are so out of harmony with
another1s.
Before their first date, when Roberta approaches Clyde
to report a mistake in her work, Clyde senses the full im
port of her action:
Clyde noticed, as she said this, that she was trying to
smile a little and appear calm, but her cheeks were quite
blanched and her hand, particularly the one that held the
bundle, trembled. On the instant he realized that al
though loyalty and order were bringing her with this mis
take to him, still there was more than that to it. In a
weak, frightened, and yet love-driven way, she was courting
him, giving him the opportunity he was seeking, wishing
him to take advantage of it. And he, embarrassed and
shaken for the moment by this sudden visitation, was still
heartened and hardened into a kind of effrontery and gal
lantry such as he had not felt as yet in regard to her.
She was seeking him— that was plain. She was interested,
and clever enough to make the occasion which permitted him
to speak. Wonderful! The sweetness of her daring.
(p. 294)
When Clyde and Roberta exchange Christmas gifts, the
scene is made poignant by the undercurrent of emotion.
103
Despite Clyde's lavish gift and his reassuring words, Rober
ta senses his indifference:
Something of this latest mood in him reached Roberta now,
even as she listened to his words and felt his caresses.
They failed to convey sincerity. His manner was too rest
less, his embraces too apathetic, his tone without real
tenderness. (p. 371)
Sondra's overtures to Clyde, as she invites him in for hot
chocolate after a dance, produce a scene quite opposite in
tone, but similar in that the probing of both minds reveals
that the conversation is more felt than spoken.
Clyde, thinking of the poverty he knew, and assuming from
this that she was scarcely aware of anything less than
this, was all the more overawed by the plethora of the
world to which she belonged. What means! Only to think
of being married to such a girl when all such as this
would become an everyday state. . . . And she, sensing the
import of all this to Clyde, was inclined to exaggerate her
own inseparable connection with it. To him, more than any
one else, as she now saw, she shone as a star, a paragon
of luxury and social supremacy. (p. 396)
Dreiser's choice of viewpoint is highly significant in
his characterization in An American Tragedy. The omniscient
viewpoint allows for the inner revelation of both major and
minor characters, giving subtlety and complexity to a wide
range of figures. The omniscient narrator explores the con
tradictions of behavior, the conflicts of motives, and the
changes in many of his characters. Yet he maintains a uni
fied focus by using the minor characters as reflections of
the major. The inner focus helps to develop the strength of
the relationships among the characters. In addition, the
omniscient narrator adds complexity to his characterization
104
by authorial comments which may present a value judgment
which differs from that of any of the characters.
Viewpoint in the Drowning Scene
The final chapter of Book II reveals Dreiser's control
over his technique as he effectively uses the possibilities
of the omniscient viewpoint. As all-seeing narrator, he
brings to play all the complex contrasting elements of the
climactic Big Bittern scene: the eerie beauty of the lake,
the actions, words and thoughts of the two picnickers,
Clyde and Roberta. The dramatic tension of the scene is en
hanced by the contrast between the quiet innocence of their
actions and Clyde's dark motives:
He would not row directly to that island to the south.
It was— too far— too early. She might think it odd. Bet
ter a little delay. A little time in which to think— a
little while in which to reconnoiter. Roberta would be
wanting to eat her lunch (her lunch!). (p. 524)
And Roberta's expectations contrast ironically with Clyde's:
And she was beginning to hum a little, and then to make
advisory and practical references to the nature of their
coming adventure together— their material and financial
state from now on. . . . (p. 525)
The sensitivity of Clyde's character is suggested by
his horror of murder, a state which also adds to the sus
pense :
How could he have dreamed to better his fortunes by any so
wild and brutal a scheme as this anyhow— to kill and then
run away— or rather to kill and pretend that he and she
had drowned— while he— the real murderer— slipped away to
life and happiness. What a horrible plan! (p. 520)
The beauty of the lake, the dark peace of a small pool casts
105
a spell which draws him from his terrible plans, and brings
him a terrifying vision of Roberta struggling in the water:
God! How terrible! The expression on her face! What in
God's name was he thinking of anyway? Death! Murder!
(p. 528)
Although the viewpoint is almost entirely Clyde's,
Roberta's presence and actions are carefully noted. The
narrator reports the most ironic of her actions:
"Isn't this water cold?" She had put her hand over the
side and was trailing it in the blue-black ripples made by
his oars. (p. 524)
It was Roberta singing cheerfully, one hand in the deep
blue water. (p. 526)
Clyde's thoughts also mirror Roberta's mood:
And yet Roberta, sitting here with him now on the sand,
feeling quite at peace with all the world as he could
see. (p. 525)
When appropriate, the narrator gives a brief glimpse of her
thoughts:
And Roberta, suddenly noticing the strangeness of it all,
the something of eerie unreason or physical and mental
indetermination so strangely and painfully contrasting
with this scene. . . . (p. 530)
Dreiser's control of his viewpoint enhances his climax,
when Clyde tries, but fails- to carry out his designs. The
reader has already been prepared for Clyde's vacillation
by the uncertainty of his mood and his sense of horror. In
addition, immediately before the crisis moment, Dreiser
leaves Clyde's viewpoint to make a brief but significant
observation: "His wet, damp, nervous hands! And his dark,
liquid, nervous eyes, looking anywhere but at her" (p. 529).
106
The crisis itself opens in Clyde's mind, showing his
sense that the time to act was at hand. Then Dreiser shifts
from Clyde's thoughts to the narrator's explanation, "a sud
den palsy of the will— of courage— of hate or rage suffi
cient. . (p. 530), and to the report of the observer,
And in the meantime his eyes— the pupils of the same grow
ing momentarily larger and more lurid; his face and hands
tense and contracted— the stillness of his position.
(p. 530)
Elsewhere Dreiser has used a similar technique, re
treating from the inner world of a character in a moment of
extreme crisis. For example, once Roberta comes toward
Clyde in the boat, her thoughts are never again revealed;
similarly Clyde's last moments are presented entirely
through the numbed horror of McMillan (pp. 870-871). By
shifting from victim to observer, Dreiser achieves suffi
cient distance to avoid melodrama and sentimentality.
The handling of viewpoint in the chapter is marred only
by the paragraph presenting Roberta's last struggles, for
here again Dreiser falls back on "the voice," whose past
history and melodramatic tone make it a disappointing in
strument at this crucial moment (pp. 530-531). Fortunately
the chapter ends effectively and dramatically with the sym
bolic cry of the weir-weir bird heard throughout the final
moments. Two closing paragraphs present Clyde's actions and
his troubled thoughts. The final sentence is an understated
report;
107
And a youth making his way through a dark, uninhabited
wood, a dry straw hat upon his head, a bag in his hand,
walking briskly and yet warily— south— south. (p. 533)
Despite occasional flaws, Dreiser's skillful control
over his viewpoint in An American Tragedy contributes great
ly to its success as a work of literary artistry. The omnis
cient convention aids him in keeping his long story moving
smoothly and in maintaining the reader's interest. The
psychological probing of major and minor characters adds
life and depth to his characterization. The focus of the
novel is on the inner world which becomes the center of the
action in Book III.
CHAPTER IV
DETAIL AND DIALOGUE
Further evidence of Dreiser's literary artistry is
found in his discriminating use of detail and in his gener
ally fine dialogue. He takes the facts and sounds of daily
life, and by astute selection, creates the impression of the
fullness and complexity of life itself.
The Uses of Detail
The amount of detail which Dreiser uses to flesh out
his novel has been the object of much criticism and even
derision. Whipple speaks of Dreiser’s "mountains of point
less detail" (p. 72). Canby complains that Dreiser "could
never get beyond a dazed determination to overwhelm us with
unpleasant facts" (p. 569). Hoffman writes that Dreiser's
method is "saturation by overemphasis and detail" (p. 51).
And according to Foerster, Dreiser "piles up detail as if
to match the detail of actual life" (p. 1347). Such criti
cism is actually far from true to Dreiser's practices. The
critics are guilty of undiscriminating generalities, perhaps
a result of the extreme length of the novel combined with
Dreiser's reputation as a realist.
It may be, in addition, that readers are misled by
108
109
Dreiser's carefully detailed pictures of the American scene
into assuming that the details are his only concern. What
ever else may be said of Dreiser's skill, he was a gifted
artist. With both the vigor of a housepainter and the skill
of an engraver, he created a vivid panorama of American life.
Many of the dramatized scenes in An American Tragedy are
memorable vignettes of an American era: the opening scene
of the street revival meeting; Hortense flirting with Clyde
*
under the eye of the floorwalker; the lure of the store win
dow where Hortense spies her fur coat; the cheap splendor of
the Hotel Green-Davidson lobby; the cheap roominghouse neigh
borhood where Esta hides herself; the roadhouse where Clyde
and his friends cavort just before the accident— all these
from Book I alone. Matthiessen suggests that Dreiser may
have caught his sense of the historical importance of "the
everchanging surfaces of the new American cities" (p. 67)
from Balzac, whom he read eagerly as a young newspaperman.
Dreiser's forte was not the dazzling, the spectacular;
he never approaches the sweep of Zola's unforgettable pic
ture of Nana at the races, or the color of Crane's battle
scenes. But Dreiser's vivid rendering of the homely details
of the common routine imparts a sense of life to his writ
ings. The reader walks along with the Griffiths family as
they enter their mission home at the end of chapter 1:
They now entered into the narrow side street from which
they had emerged and walking as many as a dozen doors from
the corner, entered the door of a yellow single-story
110
wooden building, the large window and the two glass panes
in the central door of which had been painted a gray-
white. Across both windows and the smaller panels in the
double door had been painted: "The Door of Hope. Bethel
Independent Mission. Meetings Every Wednesday and Satur
day night, 8 to 10. Sundays at 11, 3, and 8. Everybody
Welcome." Under this legend on each window were printed
the words: "God is Love," and below this again, in smaller
type: "How Long Since You Wrote to Mother?" (p. 21)
The details which Dreiser selects here not only create a
scene of the mission, but suggest the deprivations of the
family, the tenor of its emotional and religious life and
its weekly schedule. Dreiser's scenes are memorable because
in addition to the social surface, the fashions of dress and
manners of an era, they reveal something of the motives and
moods of his characters as well. For example, the descrip
tion of Kansas City at night assumes significance as it
illuminates the craving of Clyde Griffiths:
On this night in this great street with its cars and
crowds and tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out of
normal life, to be made a show and jest of. The handsome
automobiles that sped by, the loitering pedestrians moving
off to what interests and comforts he could only surmise;
the gay pairs of young people, laughing and jesting and
the "kids" staring, all troubled him with a sense of some
thing different, better, more beautiful than his, or
rather their life. (p. 18)
Perhaps because he is often thought of as the historian
of the American city, Dreiser's feeling for natural set
tings is usually ignored. In Jennie Gerhardt, the brief
second chapter, although a somewhat over-blown pastoral
lyric, conveys the natural warmth and simple goodness of
Jennie's character:
When the soft, low call of the wood-doves, those spirits
Ill
of the summer, came out of the distance, she would incline
her head and listen, the whole spiritual quality of it,
dropping like silver bubbles into her own great heart.
An American Tragedy contains several scenes in which
natural surroundings create a powerful and appropriate back
ground for crucial action. At the close of Book I, the win
ter scene, with its stark scenery and the muffled danger of
a snowstorm, creates a chill of foreboding; the inevitable
accident itself is partly caused by nature’s caprice. Later
Clyde comes to Lycurgus with the spring, his hopes rising as
quickly as the early flowers on the lawns of the Wykeagy
Avenue mansions. A rich natural setting heightens the mood
of romance as Clyde and Roberta meet at Crum Lake;
He rounded a point studded with a clump of trees and bush
es and covering a shallow where were scores of water lil
ies afloat, their large leaves resting flat upon the still
water of the lake. And on the bank to the left was a girl
standing and looking at them. She had her hat off and one
hand to her eyes for she was facing the sun and was look
ing down in the water. (p. 283)
A year later Clyde thinks of the bitter contrast be
tween this idyllic scene and the dark gloomy atmosphere
evoked by Big Bittern Lake. Its eerie remoteness and deca
dent beauty are an appropriate setting for Clyde's mental
dislocation and murderous thoughts;
The decadent and weird nature of some of the bogs and
tarns on either side of the only comparatively passable
dirt roads which here and there were festooned with fune
real or viperous vines, and strewn like deserted battle-
^(New York; World Publishing Company, 1946), p. 16.
All references are to this edition.
112
fields with soggy and decayed piles of fallen and criss
crossed logs— in places as many as four deep— one above
the other— in the green slime that an undrained depression
in the earth had created. (p. 292)
Powys praises the "imaginative heightening" of the Big Bit
tern scene for its "poetic porousness and transparency," its
suggestion of mysticism (p. 336). The scene shows that
Dreiser uses detail not only to create a solid concrete
world, but also to evoke a mood.
Protesting the frequent censure of Dreiser's detail,
Knight insists that in An American Tragedy,
There is not a chapter, hardly a page, in the two volumes
which could be deleted without injury to this case; and
practically every line is pertinent to the exposition of
Griffiths' character. (Strenuous Age, p. 343)
While perhaps a shade too strong, Knight's statement is val
id in its emphasis on the essential unity and significance of
Dreiser's detail to amplify the complex character and prob
lems of his central figure. In Book II, Dreiser interrupts
the early attraction between Clyde and Roberta to devote six
pages to a description of Roberta's home and family and a
narration of the events which brought her to Lycurgus. The
details of her past not only prepare for her response to
Clyde's advances, but parallel Clyde's own experiences: a
lonely deprived youth prompts both of them to seek a better
life away from their families.
Walcutt properly praises Dreiser's "dedication to the
task of finally making moral and metaphysical sense" out of
his realistic detail (in Herzberg, p. 286). A second look
113
at apparently irrelevant details often reveals their signif
icance. Within the fur-coat episode Dreiser gives 3 pages
to the dickering between Hortense and Rubenstein over the
price of the coat. The dramatized scene is apparently ir
relevant to Clyde, for Hortense could have merely told him
the price. The scene, however, presents facets of character
and values which parallel Clyde's. Both Hortense and Ruben
stein reflect the mores of the society which molds Clyde:
they are deceitful despite apparent good will; both are ma
terialistic and greedy; both treat sexual promiscuity light
ly.
The opening of Book III furnishes another example of
Dreiser's use of apparently irrelevant details. Immediately
following the drowning which ends Book II, Dreiser devotes
half a page to the coroner as he leafs through a mail order
catalog, an incongruous sequel to the Big Bittern tragedy:
And while deciphering from its pages the price of shoes,
jackets, hats, and caps for his five omnivorous children,
a greatcoat for himself of soothing proportions, high
collar, broad belt, large impressive buttons chancing to
take his eye, he had paused to consider regretfully that
the family budget of three thousand dollars a year would
never permit of so great luxury. . . . (p. 537)
The details appear excessive. Of what import is the style
of a wished-for coat or the amount of the coroner's salary?
Yet these details parallel Clyde's materialistic ambitions,
and provide a forceful picture of the work-a-day world which
will judge his actions. It is hard to imagine a coroner
with such sober but petty concerns able to understand
114
Clyde's virtually unbalanced response to the appeal and af
fection of Sondra Finchley, or able to sympathize with the
bitter turmoil which drove Clyde to Big Bittern.
The relevance of Dreiser's detail may stem from its
foreshadowing of future events. In An American Tragedy al
most every episode of the first half of the novel adds
plausibility and significance to the later, darker events.
Clyde's wealthy uncle, who becomes his benefactor in Book II,
is mentioned in Book I, 2. Clyde's role as a bellboy makes
plausible their chance meeting and also introduces Clyde to
the life of luxury he comes to crave. His mother's emotion
al and religious appeal for Clyde in Book III is foreshad
owed by his early respect for her; she is always his lode
star, for when troubled by his actions or desires, he thinks
guiltily, not of God or of his father, but of her. To her
he wires the news of his conviction, where Chester Gillette
had wired his father (Castle, p. 77).
Clyde's attempts to understand himself and life, so im
portant in Book III, are introduced in Book I as he struggles
to square his parents' optimistic faith with their deprived
life, as he puzzles over Esta's actions, and as he senses
the selfishness and foolhardiness of his own actions. Just
as he feels shabby in his neglect of Esta, he later feels
that he has wronged Roberta; yet in both instances he pur
sues his dreams.
Clyde's self-centered ambitions for wealth and luxury,
115
later inflamed by his uncle's position and by Sondra's en
couragement, grow out of his childhood sense of deprivation
and poverty. His shame over his family's social and eco
nomic handicaps, as well as their strange religiosity, makes
him an isolated and lonely youth, a mood which later prompts
him to seek out Roberta.
Clyde's ill treatment of Roberta, as first seen in his
almost callous insistence upon entrance to her room, springs
partly from his sense of having been played for a fool by
Hortense. His sympathy toward Roberta's pregnancy is weak
ened by his memory of Esta's experience, for he thinks that
Roberta could have the baby alone, as his sister had. He
resents Roberta's insistence on a marriage which would ruin
his future, since like Esta, she is not entirely innocent.
The Esta episode and the mention of similar cases known to
the doctor and lawyer (in Book III) make Clyde's questioning
of the double standard more than an attempt at self-justi
fication.
Clyde's inadequate grasp of reality, his craving for
the impossible which brings him to tragedy, is suggested in
Book I by his foolish hope to secure the sole favors of the
fickle Hortense. After the accident he shows his tendency
to avoid rather than face his problems. His unthinking
flight foreshadows the lack of resourcefulness and lack of
sophistication which handicap his response to Roberta's
dilemma.
116
The first two chapters of Book II not only introduce
the Lycurgus Griffiths family, but also anticipate later
events. Bella Griffiths' open-hearted friendly interest and
her curiosity concerning Clyde anticipate Sondra*s interest,
and make plausible his acceptance by the established younger
set. Gilbert Griffiths shows that he objects to sharing the
Griffiths name or wealth with anyone, especially a cousin
who resembles him but is better looking. Gilbert's antago
nism and the unthinking neglect of his busy father are partly
responsible for driving Clyde to Roberta. It is clear from
the outset that the family will give Clyde only a half
chance; ironically either more kindness from Gilbert or less
from Bella and her friends might have saved Clyde from dis
aster.
Foreshadowing within minor episodes also adds to the
tension. Before Clyde dates Hortense Ratterer warns him,
"I don't think she's on the level with anybody. . . . She'll
only work you an' you might not get anything either" (p. 90).
The probability of Clyde's involvement with Roberta is sug
gested by the foreman's reservations:
Also was it wise to place a young man of Clyde's years and
looks among so many girls? For, being susceptible, as he
might well be at that age. . . . (p. 251)
The foreshadowing which Dreiser uses extensively in An Amer
ican Tragedy contributes both to structural unity and drama
tic tension. In the earlier, more episodic novels, charac-
117
2
ters drift in and out, never to be heard from again; the
tighter structure of this novel makes each episode and de
tail contribute to the whole.
Types of Detail
Because of Dreiser's reputation as a realist, critics
often assume that he is given to large blocks of concrete
detail in the manner of Sinclair Lewis. By comparison with
Lewis, however, Dreiser is almost vague about descriptions .
of buildings and rooms. Lewis gives full detail, in six
paragraphs to the Babbitt living room;
The gray walls were divided into artificial paneling by
strips of white-enameled pine. From the Babbits' former
house had come two much-carved rocking chairs, but the
other chairs were new, very deep and restful, upholstered
in blue and gold-striped velvet. A blue velvet davenport
faced the fireplace, and behind it was a cherrywood table
and a tall piano-lamp with a shade of golden silk. (Two
out of every three houses in Floral Heights had before the
fireplace a davenport, a mahogany table real or imitation,
and a piano-lamp or a reading-lamp with a shade of yellow
or rose silk.)3
Dreiser, in contrast, sketches the Griffiths' living room
with only a general sense of spacious luxury;
To Clyde even after the Green-Davidson and the Union
League, it seemed a very beautiful room. It contained so
many handsome pieces of furniture and such rich rugs and
hangings. A fire burned in the large, high fireplace
before which was circled a number of divans and chairs.
There were lamps, a tall clock, a great table, (p. 237)
2
A significant exception is Sister Carrie, where Hurst-
wood and Drouet both figure importantly and plausibly in
the closing chapters.
3
Babbitt (New York, 1922), p. 91.
118
Dreiser concentrates chiefly on the impressive effect
of the room on Clyde. Throughout An American Tragedy, the
details are more often psychic than concrete. For example
the splendors of the Finchley kitchen are only vaguely sug
gested, while their dazzling effect on Clyde is given full
play:
But he, impressed by this culinary equipment, the like of
which he had never seen before, gazed about wondering at
the wealth and security which could sustain it. (p. 396)
Nor does Dreiser give much attention to the weather,
except occasionally as a symbolic background. There is a
romantic snowfall of huge soft flakes the night of Clyde's
first dance with Sondra. Their summer week ends together
at the lakes are bright and warm. In contrast, the night
Clyde and Roberta quarrel, "The stars were sharp. The air
was cool. The leaves were beginning to turn" (p. 316).
Here the weather is significant to both plot and mood, for
it is the press of winter which prompts Clyde to insist on
seeing Roberta in her room.
Dreiser is only slightly more specific about clothing.
His description is usually brief, but a few words, usually
confined to the color of hat and costume. Frequently he
simply notes that persons are "smartly dressed" (p. 57).
The comparative lack of detail given to clothes in the novel
is significant, for clothes are a symbol of the materialism
and social prestige of the social scene. Clyde is very con
scious of his own attire and that of the young women he ad
119
mires. Yet even so, Dreiser frequently uses only those de
tails which reveal character and motive:
But Clyde was thinking that of all the girls present none
was really so pretty as Hortense— not nearly. She had
come garbed in a red and black dress with a very dark red
poke bonnet to match. And on her left cheek, just below
her small rouged mouth, she had pasted a minute square of
black court plaster in imitation of some picture beauty
she had seen. In fact, before the outing began, she had
been determined to outshine all the others present, and
distinctly she was now feeling that she was succeeding.
And Clyde, for himself, was agreeing with her. (p. 140)
Despite the stress on clothes here, the reader could
more easily describe the character of Hortense than draw
her costume. Similarly Sondra's clothing is only vaguely
described to show its effect on the admiring Clyde.
And at the sight of her now in her white satin and crystal
evening gown, her slippered feet swinging so intimately
near, a faint perfume radiating to his nostrils, he was
stirred. (p. 397)
When Sondra appears solely among the members of her own set,
there is no mention of her dress. Nor does Dreiser give
much space to the features of his characters. About all we
know of Sondra is that she has dark hair, a small tilted
nose and an arched upper lip. The reader's idea of her
beauty springs almost entirely from her all but electrifying
effect on Clyde. ^
The type of detail Dreiser supplies is illustrated in
Book III, 28, the brief scene of Clyde's sentencing. Al
though Dreiser could have made much of the drama of the con
trasting elements in the courtroom, or of the procedure
itself and the actions of the lawyers, the only detail given
120
is that "a large crowd" watched Clyde's mother as she made
notes on the scene. Except for two questions from the judge
and Clyde's brief reply that he is innocent, the only dia
logue is the judge's sentence. The remainder of the scene
describes the thoughts of Clyde and his mother, as his sag
ging courage is buoyed up by her presence, her faith in him
restored by his public protest of innocence. These emotion-
filled thoughts are apparently entirely Dreiser's invention,
for Chester's mother was not in the courtroom when her son
was sentenced (Pew, p. 48). Characteristically Dreiser
gives more space to details of the psychic and emotional
world than to the concrete and physical world.
Dreiser Without Detail
So much is made of Dreiser's use of heavily documented
detail that his ability to create a striking picture by
other methods is often ignored. Clyde's first party with
Hortense, an entire evening of revelry, is revealed in two
paragraphs through quick glimpses of youths flourishing hip
flasks and casually embracing. The foreshortened scene con
tains little specific detail, but is nevertheless vivid:
And it appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, as
Clyde saw, for one youth or another to embrace a girl
behind a door, to hold her on his lap in a chair in some
secluded corner, to lie with her on a sofa, whispering
intimate and unquestionably welcome things to her.
(pp. 90-91)
Like Crane, Dreiser can brandish bits of color and
bring a whole scene flashing to life:
121
And then this scene, where a bright sun poured a flood of
crystal light upon a greensward that stretched from tall
pines to the silver rippling waters of a lake. And off
shore in a half dozen different directions the bright
white sails of small boats— the white and green and yellow
splashes of color, where canoes paddled by idling lovers
were passing in the suni (p. 482)
Or he can capture a character in a single sentaice with a
revealing gesture:
She was really a little silly, very lightheaded, who was
infatuated by her own charms and looked in every mirror,
admiring her eyes, her hair, her neck, her hands, her
figure, and practising a peculiarly fetching smile.
(p. 91)
Whether he uses suggestion or detail, Dreiser creates vivid
and significant pictorial scenes.
Critics who over-stress Dreiser's detail ignore the
frequent compression which gives movement to his novel. The
second chapter, in just six and a half pages, covers Clyde's
twelfth through sixteenth years; similarly, in chapter 7,
one page covers four months of Hortense's tantalizing of
Clyde. In Book III, pages 812-847 cover more than a year in
the death house, and Clyde's final day is given only a page
and a half. Dreiser never slows his narrative for lurid
details. Whereas the courtship of Roberta takes eight chap
ters, their repeated intimacies take only one paragraph, and
that discusses the emotional significance of the relation
ship .
Neither does Dreiser exploit a colorful scene for its
own sake, skilled as he is at verisimilitude. In Book II,
25 and 26, Clyde's first social achievement is dramatized.
122
At the dinner dance the apparently casual conversation and
details of setting and action reveal more than a vivid so
cial scene. Gertrude Trumbull tells Clyde blandly, "People
like money more than they do looks" (p. 350). Clyde is si
lent when the conversation turns to college affairs, and
even finds himself unable^to understand the vocabulary of
the young men. Almost every detail in the 14 pages shows
the distance between Clyde and this group to which he as
pires.
In contrast, Dreiser compresses into one sentence the
Christmas dinner at the Griffiths home, an event no doubt
equally colorful, and equally significant for Clyde. Here
Dreiser is concerned not with the dinner, but with Clyde's
breaking a date with Roberta in favor of an impromptu after-
dinner party. The treatment of these two social events il
lustrates Dreiser's selectivity, his astute choice of detail
or compression.
Perhaps Dreiser's novel gives the impression of being
heavily detailed because it is so long and because it en
compasses so many characters and reveals so much of the
thoughts of even minor characters. Actually, however,
Dreiser's surface details are few and vague; he gives only
a suggestion of the physical setting and spends little more
time on the overt action and speech. But the thoughts,
motives and moods of the characters in An American Tragedy
are fully exhibited.
123
Dialogue
Dreiser's dialogue reproduces the tones of common
speech without the over-deliberate lower-class dialect
heard in Crane's Maggie or The Red Badge of Courage, and
without the caricature so often used by Lewis. Dreiser uses
dialogue chiefly to add the sound of life to his characters
and scenes; he does not rely on it for characterization as
much as do many of his contemporaries.
Clyde's speeches are suited to his character and to the
changes he undergoes during the novel. His favorite slang
as a boy, "Gee," gives place to "God" after Book II as he
matures and his situation becomes more desperate. In Book I
Clyde's speech reveals his youth and lack of schooling by
the frequent slang and the flaws in grammar:
Ratterer says I've got you on the brain. . . . You don't
mean to say you got to-night free, have you? Well, ain't
that tough? I thought you were all dated up. I got to
work. (p. 123)
In contrast, his speech in Book II and III reflects the
polish he has acquired with maturity and through associa
tion. Even when he is off guard, as in his quarrel with
Roberta, his speech is less slangy, more smooth:
Oh, who would be likely to see us anyhow, at this time of
night? There isn't anyone around. Why shouldn't we go
there for a few moments if we want to? No one would be
likely to hear us. We needn't talk so loud. There isn't
anyone on the street, even. Let's walk by the house and
see if anybody is up. (p. 317)
Dreiser can skillfully present lower-class characters
without the self-conscious dialect used by Crane, e.g.,
r
124
Well, when we was a-fightin' this atternoon, all-of-a
sudden he began t' rip up an' cuss an' beller at me.
"Yer shot, yeh blamed infernal!"— he swear horrible— he
ses t' m e .4
Hortense speaks in choppy sentence fragments marked by poor
grammar:
Oh, no, he don't, either. . . . Whatcha doin' around six
o'clock to-night? . . . Well, I gotta date, but I don't
want to keep it. . . . I don't have to break it. I would
though if you was free. (p. 123)
The bellboys' speeches carry the vitality of youth and the
flavor of slang:
Can you beat that English stuff? They can certainly lay
on the class, eh? (p. 43)
Now, don't get excited. Just hold your horses, will yuh?
You’ll be all right. You're jist like I was when I begun
— all noives. . . . (p. 53)
Dreiser's dialogue reveals significant differences be
tween his characters. They do not all speak in the same
voice. The difference between Clyde's three girl friends
is apparent in their replies to his compliments. Hortense
reveals her coarse flippancy: "Gee, but you can pour on the
molasses, kid, when you want to" (p. 140). Roberta's iden
tical protest is shy and humble:
Oh, now, Mr. Griffiths . . . You mustn't begin that way.
I'll be afraid you're a dreadful flatterer. I'll have to
think you are if you say anything like that so quickly.
(p. 287)
Sondra is equally coy, but more poised and sophisticated:
My, but you can say the nicest things in the nicest way
^The Red Badge of Courage (New York, 1951), p. 119.
125
when you want to. . . . And you say them just as though
you meant them. (p. 363)
While the dialogue of An American Tragedy is, for the
most part, life-like and well-suited to character, here
again Dreiser manifests disturbing unevenness. Beside so
much convincing dialogue, there are occasional speeches
which are almost laughable for their inconsistency or incon
gruity of word choice. Gilbert addresses his father in one
instance with "Spin the big news, Dad" (p. 175), and else
where, "Everything all right with you, Mr. Griffiths?"
(p. 240). Matthiessen attributes Dreiser's ineptness in
reproducing the casual social conversations of the upper
classes to his lack of personal experience in such circles
(p. 198). I think, however, it probably stems more from
Dreiser's faulty ear for words, for he can be as inconsis
tent in dealing with the lower classes as well.
While Clyde's speeches are usually in character, the
vocabulary of his rhapsody over his new job is much too
rhetorical:
And there were his meals and his uniform. Kind Heaven!
What a realization of paradise! What a consummation of
luxury! (p. 49)
And elsewhere the young, unschooled Clyde thinks of another
lad as "the quintessence of Chesterfieldian grace and airs
and looks" (p. 60). Perhaps the most incongruous words are
those attributed to Roberta's father as he sees his wife
faint at the news of Roberta’s death: "Quite right, So
126
should it be. Momentary escape for her from the contempla
tion of this horrible fact" (p. 558). Such obvious blunders
are fortunately few among so much dialogue that has the
sound of speech and the flavor of character.
Skillful as Dreiser's dialogue generally is, he relies
on it less than do Hemingway, Faulkner, or Lewis. In con
trast to their pages, his appear solid. Not that Dreiser
fills blocks of print with detailed description or exposi
tion, but he often condenses action and dialogue into one
paragraph, a foreshortening technique that James often used,
for example:
And Clyde, hearing of this defeat, was at last reduced to
a nervous, gloomy silence, absolutely devoid of a helpful
suggestion. He could not think what to say and was chief
ly fearful lest Roberta now make some demand with which
socially or economically he could not comply. However, in
regard to this she said little on the way home. Instead
she sat and stared out of the window— thinking of her
defenseless predicament that was becoming more real and
terrible to her hourly. By way of excuse she pleaded that
she had a headache. She wanted to be alone— only to think
more— to try to work out a solution. She must work out
some way. (p. 445)
In addition, frequently Dreiser uses condensed rather
than quoted conversations, and indirect quotations:
So finding Clyde on the bench beside him from time to
time, he had proceeded to continue his instructions.
Kansas City was a fine place to be if you knew how to
live. He had worked in other cities— Buffalo, Cleveland,
Detroit, St. Louis— before he came here, but he had not
liked any of them any better, principally— which was a
fact which he did not trouble to point out at the time—
because he had not done as well in those places as he had
here. (p. 62)
Most characteristically, Dreiser adds an explanation of
127
motive, attitude, or perception to a condensed speech:
And Roberta, after Clyde had extracted the lunch most
cautiously from his bag, spreading it on a newspaper on
the shore, while he walked here and there, making strained
and yet admiring comments on the beauty of the scene— the
pines and the curve of this small bay, yet thinking—
thinking, thinking of the island farther on and the bay
below that again somewhere. . . . (p. 525)
Apparently Dreiser was not fully satisfied even when quoting
his characters' thoughts, for he must amplify and explain:
For he was thinking: "Oh, if I could say to her how beau
tiful I really think she is. If I could just put my arms
around her and kiss her. ..." And strangely, consider
ing his first approaches toward Roberta, the thought was
without lust, just the desire to constrain and fondle a
perfect object. (p. 397)
Sometimes he probes the minds of both speakers:
[Sondra] "Oh, pardon me, you're Mr. Clyde Griffiths, I see
now. It's my mistake, I thought you were Gilbert. I
couldn't quite make you out in the light." She had for
the moment an embarrassed and fidgety and halting manner,
which Clyde noticed and which he saw implied that she had
made a mistake that was not entirely flattering to him nor
satisfactory to her. And this in turn caused him to became
confused and anxious to retire. (p. 334)
Dreiser reveals his main figures more fully through
their thoughts than through their words. The contrast be
tween the inner and outer life, however, is often dramatic
and revealing:
"But you mustn't, Ma. Gee, you mustn't cry. I know it's
hard on you. But I'll be all right. Sure I will. It
isn't as bad as I thought." Yet inwardly saying: "Oh,
God how bad!" (p. 819)
One of the most poignant conversations in the novel is pre
sented in the indirect manner, as Clyde's mother asks him
for the truth about the drowning of Roberta:
128
Clyde, now as always overawed and thrown back on himself
by that uncompromising and shameless honesty which he had
never been able to comprehend in her, announced, with all
the firmness that he could muster— yet with a secret qua
vering chill in his heart— that he had sworn to the truth.
He had not done those things with which he had been
charged. He had not. But alas, as she now said to her
self, on observing him, what was that about his eyes— a
faint flicker perhaps. He was not so sure— as self-con
vinced and definite as she had hoped— as she had prayed
he would be. No, no, there was something in his manner,
his words, as he spoke— a faint recessive intonation, a
sense of something troubled, dubious, perhaps, which quite
froze her now. (pp* 805-806)
The effective alternation of dialogue and introspective
revelation demonstrates Dreiser's gain in technical skill
over his earlier novels, in which thought was either slight
ed or put in awkwardly in huge chunks, as if a character sat
down once or twice in a lifetime to think a chapterful. The
mixture of dialogue and narrative also helps to move the
story along economically; it adds to the complexity of char
acterization by supplementing the overt words and actions
with the buried thought, or the hidden motive.
Although in many ways somewhat a primitive writer,
Dreiser demonstrates in An American Tragedy that his narra
tive technique has improved with experience. Despite the
blunders which will always mar his works, the novel is an
example of excellent writing. Effective handling of view
point, detail and dialogue demonstrate Dreiser's control
over his material and his technique. The characterization,
pictorial scenes and realistic speeches give the novel a
sense of life; the psychological probing, the contrasts and
129
ironies give it depth. In An American Tragedy. Dreiser
attains a mastery of technique which is insufficiently rec
ognized.
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
An American Tragedy is, as its title suggests, a
uniquely American story, for the tragedy has its roots in
American social and economic patterns. Despite its fre
quently critical picture of American life, however, the
novel is not primarily an indictment of our society. Un
fortunately, Dreiser's reputation as a critic of our society
has encouraged reading into An American Tragedy the social
criticism found in his later essays and letters.
Dreiser on Social Protest in Literature
Dreiser clearly did not think of the novel as a proper
form for social criticism. In a letter of January 29, 1919,
he writes:
The artist has but one duty: to present life "in the
round." If any one thereafter wishes to extract a spirit
ual message, well and good; or a material message, good
also. The picture is the thing. (Letters, I, 258)
And in a letter of August 7, 1928, after the publication of
An American Tragedy, he writes, "I never can see Protest as
literature" (Letters, II, 472). In an interview in 1925,
Dreiser complains of those who write realistic books in or
der to "indict life, not to picture it in its ordinary beau
ty" (Dudley, p. 443). Obviously Dreiser conceived of him-
130
131
self not as a reformer or social critic, but as an artist.
Yet some critics have tried to push him into the role
of critic and reformer. John Flanagan sees Dreiser as pri
marily a social critic:
During a long and productive life he constantly assailed
a society which stacked the cards against the frail and
the weak and the poor. . . . To the end of his life Drei
ser pictured this uneven struggle, with capitalism sucking
away the life of the worker or tantalizing him by depriv
ing him of success (as in the case of Clyde Griffiths)
just when he thought he had achieved it.l
Hoffman says of An American Tragedy. "The burden of infer
ence is in favor of social criticism, as the leftists have
correctly insisted" (Modern Novel, p. 49). The Reader1s
Encyclopedia concludes that Dreiser "blames society and the
industrial system" for Clyde's tragedy (Herzberg, p. 28).
Dreiser is even made out to be a social reformer in
An American Tragedy. According to Grant C. Knight, Drei
ser's purpose in this novel is to prove that "the low plane
2
of national ideals is corrupting the young." Walcutt
writes:
Not Clyde Griffiths, the weak hero who is convicted for
the murder of his pregnant sweetheart, but society is made
responsible for the tragedy, a society which has fascina
ted the youth with its glitter while failing to provide
him with moral restraint. Nevertheless the novel seems
more helpful and positive than Dreiser's earlier works and
furnishes in the idea of a social reform a change from the
sense of purposelessness of the earlier novels. (in Herz-
^"Theodore Dreiser in Retrospect," Southwest Review,
XXXI (August 1946), 408.
2
The Novel in English (New York, 1931), p. 343.
132
berg, p. 286)
But to read An American Tragedy in these terms, as an
attack on society or an appeal for social reform is "both to
falsify and diminish it," according to Becker, whose study
of Dreiser's career concludes that he was little concerned
with social criticism during his most creative period, 1900-
1925 (p. 118). That Dreiser's view of the relationship be
tween man and society is not narrowed to a system of econom
ic causation is demonstrated by his letter to Clifford
Odets concerning Odets' play, Paradise Lost. It is signifi
cant that the letter is dated December 23, 1935, a time when
Dreiser himself was actively engaged in political controver
sy:
Personally I would not agree that the neuroses from which
a number of your characters were certainly suffering were
the result of the economic order alone. My personal opin
ion has been that they occur in all walks and in all cir
cumstances, as much where there is no economic distress as
where there is. Again I am positively convinced that the
intense sex drama involved could as well have happened in
a Marxian as a capitalistic regime. (Letters, II, 756)
Even a letter which avows his sympathy with the general aims
of Communism sniffs at the idea that the aims of art and re
form can be reconciled:
Also, of course, it is impossible to produce any novel or
painting or whatever which does not have some social back
ground which is presented favorably or unfavorably either
by implication or directly, because the material and the
artist himself are products of the same. This propaganda
idea has really been carried to an absurd conclusion.
Only the other day some young writer was telling me that
a man would write a better book if he had read and under
stood the Marxian dialecticI Imagine1 (To Evelyn Scott,
June 17, 1938. Letters, III, 799-800)
133
Dreiser as a Social Critic
Yet there is no doubt that Dreiser was sharply critical
of both the economic and social patterns of the society in
which he lived and wrote. He thought that unrestricted cap
italism fostered unfairness, greed and materialism. He cen
sured the narrowness and selfishness of the comfortable
classes. He deplored the hypocritical social conventions
which denied the worth of the down-trodden and which denied
the beauty and vigor of man's sexual nature. Perhaps these
views had been growing ever since his childhood, but his ac
tive interest in social and economic issues came relatively
late in his life, well after the publication of An American
Tragedy.
During a childhood marked by insecurity and poverty,
Dreiser developed a sympathy for the economically deprived.
He writes on March 27, 1943:
You see, Mencken, unlike yourself, I am biased. I was
born poor. For a time, in November and December, once, I
went without shoes. I saw my beloved Mother suffer from
want— even worry and wring her hands in misery. And for
that reason, perhaps— let it be what it will— I, regard
less of whom or what, am for a social system that can and
will do better than that for its members— those who try,
however humbly,— and more, wish to learn how to help them
selves, but are none-the-less defeated by the trickeries
of a set of vainglorious dunces, who actually believe that
money— however come by— the privilege of buying this and
that— distinguishes them above all others of the very so
cial system which has permitted them to be and to trick
these others out of the money that makes them so great.
(Letters, III, 982)
As a young newspaper reporter in Chicago, St. Louis, Pitts
burgh, and then New York, Dreiser noted the immense con
134
trasts between the rich and poor.
At this period of his life, however, he was more envi
ous and admiring of the wealthy than he was critical. Even
after Sister Carrie, as a feature writer and magazine edi
tor, his focus was not on economic or political issues, but
on miscellaneous human interest topics of various types.
Although he apparently ignored the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in
1928 he became involved in the Tom Mooney case (a supposed
miscarriage of justice because of Mooney's union activities).
While his early letters are either personal notes to friends
or relate to his writings, after the Mooney case the letters
are increasingly devoted to economic and political issues,
e.g., the problems of Southern Negroes (1931), the weaknes
ses of labor unions (1931), aid for the victims of the Span
ish War (1938), political graft in Los Angeles (1939), and
capitalistic control of the "free" press (1940). Apparently
Dreiser was nearly sixty before he became actively involved
in the social issues to which thereafter he devoted almost
all of his energy.
Matthiessen attributes the change in Dreiser's inter
ests to his 1927 trip to Russia, which revealed to him the
possibilities of a non-capitalistic system, and to his motor
trip across the United States in 1930, at the height of the
depression which caused so many Americans to lose faith in
capitalism (p. 216). In a letter dated January 1, 1932,
Dreiser writes,
135
I would like to see a party of ideas, power and discipline
change the economic structure of this country peacefully.
(Letters, II, 572)
In addition, in connection with the 1931 filming of An Ameri
can Tragedy, Dreiser felt that he had been victimized by
finance capitalism, unfairly supported by the courts. His
disillusionment colors his next work, Tragic America. To
the time of his death he worked for a variety of liberal
political causes.
Dreiser's Marxism
That Dreiser joined the Communist party in 1945, short
ly before his death the following year, may lead modern crit
ics to read the party line into An American Tragedy. That
Dreiser was never a doctrinaire Marxist is evident in his
refusal to join the hundreds of American intellectuals who
became Communist party members during the thirties. In a
letter of October 28, 1932, Dreiser writes, "As for my Com
munism, it is a very liberal thing. I am not an exact Marx
ist by any means" (Letters, II, 615).
His joining the party he viewed as a gesture of sup
port for its avowed humanitarian aims on behalf of the weak
and the misplaced whom he had always pitied and who were so
frequently doomed by competitive capitalism. In a letter of
January 20, 1933, he writes:
I feel that the immense gulf between wealth and poverty
in America and throughout the world should be narrowed.
I feel that government should truly emphasize, and, in so
far as humanly possible, effect the welfare of all of the
136
people— not that of a given class. I am for the mental
and physical and social advancement of all men everywhere,
if that is possible. And my hope as well as my faith is
that it is possible. (Letters, II, 620-621)
Actually, the program of the party did not please him
as much as its aims: he was always suspicious of those who
felt that some scheme of reform which they alone held was
the final answer to life's problems; in addition, he had
been incensed by the lack of personal and artistic freedom
in Russia during his visit there in 1928: "the ruthless
suppression of individualism . . . peace and prosperity under
a gun" (Letters, II, 474). The same year in which he joined
the Communist party he had taken communion on Good Friday at
a Congregational church, and reported himself deeply moved
by the experience. Dreiser's joining the party was a final
gesture of a tired old man who had so long favored humani
tarian ideals and international cooperation; it was not a
full endorsement of the party line, nor a rejection of Amer
ica.
Nor does An American Tragedy present anything resem
bling the stereotyped leftist attack on capitalism wherein
the brutal capitalist exploits the innocent workers. The
capitalist, Samuel Griffiths, owner and manager of the collar
factory, is kindly and honest; he frequently acts against
his own self-interests in favor of moral values. He is one
of the most admirable persons in the novel. Witness his at
titude when he undertakes Clyde's defense:
137
Only one thing I want to say— I hope he isn't guilty.
And I want every proper step taken to discover whether he
is or not, and if not, to defend him to the limit of the
law. But no more than that. . . . Trouble or no trouble
— disgrace or no disgrace— I'll do what I can to help him
if he's innocent— if there's even the faintest reason for
believing so. . . . (p. 634)
Dreiser insists on the integrity and magnaminity of Samuel
Griffiths, though Chester Gillette's wealthy relatives had
made no effort for his defense (Castle, p. 22).
In contrast to the capable capitalist are those in the
working classes, characteristically lacking in refinement,
ability, and vigor:
And after dinner he made his way out into the principal
thoroughfares of Lycurgus, only to observe such a crowd of
nondescript mill workers . . . girls and boys, men and
women of various nationalities, and types— Americans,
Poles, Hungarians, French, English— and for the most part
— if not entirely touched with a peculiar something— ig
norance or thickness of mind or body, or with a certain
lack of taste or alertness or daring, which seemed to mark
them one and all as of the basement world which he had
seen only this afternoon. (p. 211)
Clyde views his fellow workers in the shrinking depart
ment as "meaty or stodgy mentally and physically" (p. 215).
God or Providence or Nature is responsible for their low
position, not an exploiting economic system. Ironically
enough, one of the factory rules which troubles Clyde, the
forbidding of fraternization between foreman and workers,
is designed by the management to protect the female workers.
While the general working conditions in the collar factory
are far from luxurious, there is no suggestion of the nau
seous sweat shop atmosphere shown briefly in Sister Carrie.
138
An American Tragedy is in no sense a leftist attack on capi
talism.
The Weaknesses of American Society
Dreiser's picture of America is not flattering, howev
er, and perhaps not even approving, for the novel exposes
weaknesses in the American scene. The values and preconcep
tions which lead Clyde toward disaster have been cited by
critics of our society as characteristic of the American:
his self-concern and sense of self-sufficiency, his lack of
family or community feeling, his lack of respect for author
ity and tradition, his love of material gratification, and
his insatiable ambition to rise above his station. "Clyde's
tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American social
system" (Walcutt, p. 211).
DeTocqueville had foreseen that the notion of equality,
which allowed all Americans to hope for success but few to
achieve it, fostered in the mass of citizens a frustrated
ambition, which made them restless and dissatisfied no mat
ter what their social and economic state. Clyde Griffiths
might never have been tempted to tragedy had he not lived
in a society where the social fluidity and economic condi
tions held out an illusion of universal opportunity. Clyde
did not expect riches without efforts? he was neither an
idle dreamer nor a criminal schemer: "He would work and
save his money and be somebody" (p. 38). Clyde simply
f
139
shared the great American ambition to "get ahead" and Sondra
Finchley seemed to offer him an ideal short-cut.
But Clyde had the misfortune to be born poor in a soci
ety where all values seemed to depend on money alone. The
all-pervading desire for wealth (or the appearance of it)
shows in all those around Clyde. All the youths wish to
dress well, not for reasons of taste or comfort, but for
pretense, hoping to appear more wealthy than they are. The
importance of clothes symbolizes the universal craving for
material and social advancement. Wealth is the determiner
of social status:
One couldn't ever be anything much more than friendly
with a moneyless clerk or pensioner, whatever his family
connections, whereas if he had a little money and some
local station somewhere, the situation was entirely dif
ferent. (p. 354)
The barber recites for Clyde a folk maxim whose truth he
too clearly knows: "Money makes the mare go" (p. 444).
The fluidity of the American social structure leads
many a youth, like Clyde, to feel that he is destined to
rise. Even as a boy, Clyde is too proud to consider a
trade:
For true to the standard of the American youth, or the
general American attitude toward life, he felt himself
above the type of labor which was purely manual. What!
Run a machine, lay bricks, learn to be a carpenter, or a
plasterer, or plumber, when boys no better than himself
were clerks and druggists assistants and bookkeepers and
assistants in banks and real estate offices and such!
(p. 26)
Clyde's understanding of equality is not that all men are
140
his equals, but that he is equal to the best of men and must
be recognized as such. Roberta too feels that life has
cheated her since she has not had all that the wealthy have:
If I'd ever had a chance like some girls. . . . But just
to be brought up in the country and without any money or
clothes or anything. . . . (pp. 392-393)
The self-centeredness which Clyde displays is also
typical of those Americans whose notion of equality gives
them little sense of responsibility or duty to others. Like
many American youths, Clyde has little concern for his fam
ily or friends. He does not feel bound to help Esta, and
flees from his friends after the accident. Roberta is also
irresponsible in not considering what her promiscuity might
cause her family to suffer. Few characters in the novel are
committed to a moral, or social, or religious goal; most
spend their energies on the selfish pleasures of the moment
or on what will bring personal gain. "Every man for him
self" is no longer the last resort in emergencies in Ameri
ca, but becomes the order of the day. The bellboys say of
their captain, "He's hard but he's got to look out for him
self, too— dat's natural . . ." (p. 62).
The uncertainty which Clyde brings to moral decisions
springs in part from the notion of equality which makes
each man his own authority. Clyde, like other American
youths, feels able to observe and judge life and morals for
himself, and thus gives little importance to family or com
munity traditions. In addition, Clyde's case is peculiarly
141
complicated, since his family's strict code is contradicted
by society; an entirely spiritual sense of values seems weak
and unreal within the framework of the fervid material soci
ety which surrounds him. Guided only by his own desires,
and awed by the opinions of the mass, Clyde slips from the
stern but safe morals of his parents and flounders in rebel
lion and guilt.
And supposedly Christian America offers him little
moral guidance, for despite its professions, its people live
by selfish, materialistic ideals. The creed of brotherhood
is belied by the competition for social position in all
classes. The churches are social centers for the middle
classes, and foster the petty moralism seen in Grace Marr
and demonstrated by the church's refusal to aid Clyde's
mother. The prevailing social conventions choke all sense
of freedom, gaiety, and joy for the young. Politics, re
spected as the voice of the people, is actually warped by
petty personal ambitions, like Orville Mason's. Justice is
mocked when a jury member, under fear of public opinion and
threat of economic reprisal, changes his vote and thereby
condemns a man to death. The barbaric spirit of the mass
emerges in the ugly courtroom crowd, thirsty for sensation
and violence, devoid of mercy and even fairness. Krutch
asserts that the novel implies,
the tragic failure of this, the most pretentiously moral
istic nation of the world, to live in the main by any law
but the law of the jungle. (p. 152)
142
Despite lofty national ideals, the American society wallows
in greed and hypocrisy.
Clyde Not the Victim of Society
While Clyde's difficulties are certainly deepened and
compounded by a fluid, materialistic society, nevertheless
Clyde is not wholly the victim of the American dream, as
3
some critxcs have described him. While the society shown
in the novel is far from perfectly suited to the free growth
of a complex, sensitive youth like Clyde, its influence is
not entirely malignant, nor is it necessarily overpowering.
In some of Dreiser’s earlier novels, the rebels appear as
strong, natural characters, rightly rebelling against a so
cial structure too narrow for their talents and needs; Cow-
perwood, Carrie, Jennie, and Witla are appealing characters
in their battles against a false and repressive social struc
ture. Clyde, however, is not a rebel in the same sense—
that an inner need compels him to live beyond conventions.
Clyde's greatest dream is in accord with the mores of
his society— to marry a rich girl and gain the best that so
ciety can offer: position, luxury, and love. All of his
life Clyde has sought acceptance in the society around (and
above) him. Tragically, the means he chooses to insure
3
Robert H. Elias, Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature
(New York, 1949), p. 220. See also Matthiessen, p. 191,
and Hoffman, Modern Novel, p. 48.
143
admission into the highest social group plunges him beneath
the lowest. In addition, more than a mere violation of a
social convention, Clyde has violated another's life.
Society is not entirely hostile to Clyde's deepest
needs. The greatest comfort of his last hours is his new
found sense of human companionship; his most desolate mo
ments are those in which he feels utterly alone. When he
thinks of murder, he draws away from society. When he can
not turn his thoughts away from the drowning scheme, he
turns back toward Lycurgus., "where at least he could be
among people" (p. 500). The drowning scene itself contri
butes to Clyde's loss of his sense of reality by its eerie
remoteness, by its distance from the steadying influence of
society.
While Clyde is, in many ways, a product of the American
culture, his total experience is not typical. He has extra
ordinary pride and ambition. Even he perceives that his
fellow bellboys are not discontented with their lot and that
others do not share his searing desire for material pleas
ures. In addition, he lacks the prop of even so casual a
family tie as that which supports his friends because of the
peculiar situation of his own family: a combination of pov
erty and religious narrowness estranges him almost entirely
from his parents.
His experiences in Lycurgus are also atypical; few boys
have an uncle who can offer the ambiguous opportunity which
144
Clyde meets. His relationship with Sondra Finchley is
largely the result of chance, created initially by his re-
ssrblance to Gilbert and fostered by his good looks and hum
ble charm. Both in his personal characteristics and in his
circumstances Clyde is unique; although over-tempted by the
American dream, to be sure, he is neither its victim nor its
representative.
The individuality of his problems is reinforced by
Dreiser's presentation of other characters who ana able to
rise above the influence of the surrounding society and to
demonstrate unselfish humanitarianism rather than egoistic
ambition, kindliness rather than haughty pride, and honesty
rather than hypocrisy. Among the wealthy, besides the kind
ly Samuel Griffiths is his daughter Myra who in her quiet
way sympathizes with Clyde and tries to put him at ease
(pp. 239-240). Among the poor, Clyde's fellow bellboy,
Ratterer, helps him on the job and invites him into his
social circle.
Even as a convict, Clyde is befriended by those who
live above the law of the jungle: his lawyers who risk un
popularity and financial loss in his defense, and a Jew who
opens his theatre for Mrs. Griffiths' lecture after the
churches have refused. The novel closes with a sympathetic
picture of the genuine altruism and strong faith of Clyde's
mother and McMillan, who furnish a significant contrast to
the religionists elsewhere in the novel who are inept,
145
indifferent, and even vicious. Poisonous and tempting as
the social mores of America may be, they cannot overwhelm
all members of society.
The third book confirms the fact that Clyde is not a
representative man economically or socially so much as spir
itually and morally* The other condemned men, all murder
ers, are drawn from every social class and condition and
have various motives for their crimes. They have not been
the victims of economic exploitation or social inequity,
but together they now face guilt and death:
For, now, in connection with this coldest and bitterest
form of prison life he was in constant psychic, if not
physical contact, with twenty other convicted charac
ters of varying temperaments and nationalities, each of
whom, like himself, had responded to some heat or lust or
misery of his nature or his circumstances. And with mur
der, a mental as well as physical explosion, as the final
outcome. . . . (p. 824)
These men represent mankind, not any particular social or
economic system, just as does Clyde Griffiths. In his ex
ploration of life and of his own nature Clyde achieves a
universality which carries his story beyond the bounds of
a social document. As Walcutt points out, even though in
Clyde's progress "social implications abound," the novel is
"first of all a work of art . . . a picture of life"
(p. 211).
Certainly American egotism, hypocrisy, and materialism
are not without responsibility in Clyde's tragedy, but ex
cept for a protest against the thoughtless cruelties of the
146
death house, the novel presents no program for social change,
singles out no one institution or class as the villain, and
does not present Clyde as an economic representative. If
Dreiser is attacking the American social or economic system,
he does so in An American Tragedy only by indirection, in
his attack on the ideals which are only in part created by
that system. Hypocrisy, greed, corruption, and selfishness
are ills of mankind, not of America, alone.
CHAPTER VI
PHILOSOPHIC IMPLICATIONS
In An American Tragedy, as in other novels, the au
thor's philosophy of life is inherent in the world he posits
Unfortunately, Dreiser's world view is often simplified or
misinterpreted, because of differences between An American
Tragedy and his other works, and because by implication the
novel contradicts its own statements. Although critics call
Dreiser a complete determinist, or a complete materialist,
or a complete nihilist, An American Tragedy shows him to be
none of these.
Critics often are content to class Dreiser as an expo
nent of materialistic determinism. According to Walter
Allen, "Dreiser . . . interpreted man according to the deter
ministic philosophy of the day."'*' Woodburn Ross concludes,
"Whatever else he may also have been, Dreiser was a mechan-
2
ist, a rather thoroughgoing determinist." Critic after
critic, ignoring contradictory evidence, is content to quote
a single pessimistic statement of 1928 as representing the
~ * ~ The English Novel (New York, 1954) , p. 289.
2
"Concerning Dreiser's Mind," American Literature,
XVIII (November 1946), 233.
147
148
whole of Dreiser's philosophy of life:
I can make no comment on my work or my life that holds
either interest or import for me. Nor can I imagine any
explanation or interpretation of any life, my own inclu
ded, that would be either true— or important, if true.
Life is to me too much a welter and play of inscrutable
forces to permit, in my case at least, any significant
comment. One may paint for one's own entertainment, and
that of others— perhaps. As I see him the utterly infini
tesimal individual weaves among the mysteries a floss-like
and wholly meaningless course— if course it be. In short
I catch no meaning from all I have seen, and pass quite
as I came, confused and dismayed.3
Such over-simplification of complex issues unfortunately
extends to the discussion of An American Tragedy as well.
The Literature of the American People says that it merely
illustrates Dreiser's materialistic and deterministic thesis
(Wicher, p. 850). Both Shafer (p. 161) and The Oxford Com
panion to American Literature see the novel as an extension
4
of the naturalism of Dreiser's earlier novels. Even a re
cent (and generally perceptive) article by Richard Lehan
assumes a completely mechanistic philosophy in An American
Tragedy.^
Dreiser's Incomplete Determinism
These views gain support from Dreiser's theory of
chemism, which he derived, in part, from Herbert Spencer.
3
In "Statements of Belief, " Bookman, LXVIII (September
1928), 25.
^James D. Hart, 3rd ed. (New York, 1956), p. 205.
5
"Dreiser's An American Tragedy," College English, XXV
(December 1963), 192.
149
Dreiser writes;
[Man] is^ a chemic animal, reacting constantly quite as
chemical and physical bodies do to laws. . . . Life and
the individual should be judged on their chemical and
physical merits. . . . (As quoted by Elias, p. 181)
In An American Tragedy, as in his earlier novels, he attri
butes actions to the working of chemistry. Esta runs away,
despite her religious training, in response to an inner
"chemism of dreams," a result of "those rearranging chemisms
upon which all the morality or immorality of the world is
based" (p. 29). Her seducer has practiced "chemic witchery"
on her (p. 30). Clyde's fondness for girls springs from "a
disposition easily and often intensely inflamed by the chem
istry of sex and the formula of beauty" (p. 263). Roberta
exerts on him "a chemic or temperamental pull" (p. 280).
Even the sophisticated Sondra succumbs to the "most des
troying aspects of the very profound chemistry of love"
(p. 456).
A half-dozen references to chemism, in a novel of 874
pages can easily be over-stressed. Apparently the chemic
theory accounts for only part of man's complex make-up, for
the family of Asa Griffiths is characterized as
one of those anomalies of psychic and social reflex and
motivation such as would tax the skill of not only the
psychologist but the chemist and the physicist as well,
to unravel. (p. 22)
While the chemism theory cannot be explained away by calling
it symbolic, the theory appears to be far from important in
An American Tragedy. Certainly it is inaccurate to say that
150
"chemic compulsion epitomizes the book" (Shafer, p. 161), or
that Dreiser accounts for all complexities of conduct "as
physical— or, more precisely chemical reactions ..."
(Ross, p. 233).
In the earlier novels, chemism is mentioned more fre
quently and is given a broader role: "that incomprehensible
chemistry we call life" (The Financier, p. 211); "the sub
tlety of the universe . . . the mystery of its chemistry"
(The "Genius." p. 122). In An American Tragedy chemism ap
pears to refer to sexual attraction only, and it always oc
curs in conjunction with words which deny its mechanism and
materialism: "dreams," "witchery," "sex," "beauty," "pro
found chemistry of love." In one instance the apparent al
ternative to chemic is temperamental. Walcutt points out
that even while using chemic as a label, Dreiser never de
nies the mystery and the power of "the unexplained phenome
non of human thought and vitality" (p. 182).
Dreiser's infrequent mention of chemism in this novel,
as well as the romantic contexts in which it occurs, sug
gests that it may be Dreiser's way of denoting the inexpli
cably powerful and illogical sexual urges, not an all-encom
passing scientific theory. Even in this limited sense, the
references to chemism are too scattered and vague to support
a completely materialistic philosophy, particularly when
Dreiser speaks often of sexual attraction in terms which
suggest mystery and romance, not compulsion:
151
On sight, and because of the witchery of a smile, the
magic and vigor of motion and youth, he was completely
infatuated. . . (p. 90).
• • • • • « • • « • # • • • • • • • • • • • • ! • • • • •
The dream of her, the enormous, compelling, weakening de
light . . . (p. 130).
* + • • • * • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • * • • • «
. . . all her desires for love, understanding, companion
ship, urged her to run after him before it was too late,
and he was gone (p. 320).
He was so impetuous— so blazing now with a flame of her
own creation. . . . (p. 485)
Walker comments that whatever "lyrics he may intersperse on
the 'chemic urge,Dreiser's characters act as people do in
the cities of which he writes (p. 148). In the context of
An American Tragedy, the characters, and even their sexual
urges are more human, less mechanical, and more mysterious
than the mechanism of chemistry would suggest.
In the earlier novels there is also much more determin
ism by the force of instinct. Characters are driven by
their instinct for mating or for self-preservation. In The
"Genius," Witla, as a mature man, is stricken with an undeni
able passion for a young girl, and wrecks his marriage and
his career. Hurstwood, driven by a blinding lust for Car
rie, steals from his employer, then tricks Carrie into run
ning away with him, leaving his career, his income, and his
family. Cowperwood1s sex drive leads him through one affair
after another, even at the expense of his social standing
and his financial empire. He likes to think of his Aileen
as a "fine animal" and excuses her unfaithfulness to him as
natural:
152
In a moment his mood changed to one of sorrow for Aileen,
for himself, for life, indeed--ifcs tangles of desire and
necessity. He could not blame Aileen. Lynde was surely
attractive. (The Titan, p. 317)
The public officials whom Cowperwood wants to manipulate
can be handled by a clever woman, for all are "woman-hungry"
(The Titan, p. 483). The overwhelming power of sex is as
sumed throughout the earlier novels, for example, "[Her
eyes] made him almost dizzy, and set up a chemical pertur
bation in his blood which quite dispelled his good resolu
tions in regard to the strange woman" (The Titan, p. 336).
In An American Tragedy sex is treated more casually and
in a more restrained fashion, even among the youth. The
older members of society are fairly stable in their sexual
relationships; families are secure from the philandering so
frequent in the earlier novels. Among the young, sex may be
an amusing pastime (as to Clyde's bellboy friends), or a
useful tool (as to the greedy Hortense). The strength of
the sexual urges in youth derives partly from illusion and
romance, as well as from instinct. Dreiser says that "back
of all youthful thought and action" lies "chemistry and urge
toward mating" (p. 29). But Roberta's actions derive from
something more than chemistry: "For here was true and poigx>-
ant love, and in youth true and poignant love is difficult
to withstand" (p. 321). Dreiser characterizes the fleeting
joy of Clyde and Roberta as a result of the "wild and unre-
capturable" fever of youth (p. 329). In defending Clyde
153
Belknap argues that youth must be excused for its dreams and
desires:
Only remember we were all once boys. And those of you
who are grown women were girls, and know well— oh, how
very well— the fevers and aches of youth that have noth
ing to do with a later practical life. (p. 718)
To make his motivation more plausible, Dreiser has made his
hero two years younger than his prototype, Chester Gillette.
Even among the young, however, in An American Tragedy
the mating instinct is not all-powerful nor indiscriminate.
Even in the brothel Clyde has motives besides the sexual.
He wants to show himself one of the crowd, and he is as
curious as he is sexually aroused. Moreover, he sympathizes
with the girl who approaches him; drawn by her apparent sin
cerity and refinement, he wants her approval. While he
craves sexual excitement, he is dissatisfied with his broth
el experience and later with the too-yielding Rita, for he
also desires refinement, sweetness, and understanding. His
pursuit of Roberta, while never in his mind connected with
marriage, is nevertheless fraught with feelings of love,
sympathy, adoration and tenderness. Sex is neither a chemic
compulsion, nor a simple animal mating, but part of a complex
relationship.
Chance happenings may also suggest a mechanical deter
minism in An American Tragedy. Elsewhere Dreiser has writ-
£
ten, "we are all blind victims of chance.". The novel
^Newspaper Days (New York, 1922), p. 260.
154
contains several chance meetings: in Kansas City Clyde
learns of his sister's return when he happens to meet his
mother bringing food to her apartment; in Chicago Clyde
happens to meet Rattererand thus secures a job at the hotel
where Samuel Griffiths happens to stay; in Lycurgus Clyde
meets both Roberta and Sondra by chance. Other chance hap
penings are even more significant: Clyde’s reading of the
Pass Lake drowning just before he visits Big Bittern and
receives Roberta's threatening letter; and, of course, Ro
berta's falling into the water. Each of these chance epi
sodes is, moreover, Dreiser's addition to the original
story.
Just how much significance should be given the role of
chance is, however, questionable. Obviously real life is
filled with chance occurrences which are "stranger than fic
tion. " In addition, as compared to the original case, Drei
ser has lessened the role of chance in at least two instan
ces. When Grace Brown's sister happened to move, Grace is
forced to take a new room (Castle, p. 34), but in the novel,
it is Roberta who takes the initiative to move in order to
see Clyde more freely. After her drowning, Clyde goes to a
lake resort in response to a previous invitation, while
Chester had met two of his society friends by chance as he
fled from the scene, and decided to accompany them to a lake
resort (Castle, p. 146). The chance happenings in the
novel are highly plausible— two persons meet where their
155
habitual circles overlap— and the consequences of the meeting
are not predetermined. Chance furnishes the opportunity,
important as it is, but leaves alternatives of action.
Further evidence that Dreiser's determinism is not
strictly mechanical is the causation he establishes for
Clyde. This young man, extraordinarily susceptible to
wealth and feminine beauty, when frustrated by loneliness
and a low social position, seeks out Roberta. Propinquity
brings intimacy. When wealth and glamour in the person of
Sondra Finchley hold out their arms to him, it is too late
to cast off his first love. The strength of the temptation
and the squalid alternative of a poverty-ridden marriage
drive him to desperate measures. The apparent determinism,
however, springs not from an iron chain of events so much as
from character. Even at the final crisis, no physical cir-
7
cumstances prevent Clyde from swimming to aid Roberta.
Not only the course of the action, but also the author's
comments suggest the influence of Clyde's temperament on his
actions:
For to say the truth, Clyde had a soul that was not des
tined to grow up. He lacked decidedly that mental clarity
and inner directing application . . . (p. 189).
His was a disposition easily and often intensely inflamed
by the chemistry of sex and the formula of beauty. He
7
Leon Edel discusses James's use of a similar determin
ism, psychological not mechanical, wherein an action derives
from character, not from circumstances (Henry James [Minnea
polis, 1960], p. 16).
156
could not easily withstand the appeal, let alone the call,
of sex.(p. 263)
• * • • • • * • • • • • • • • • • • • # • • • • • • • * •
[Clyde had] a temperament that was as fluid and unstable
as water. (p. 338)
It remained as usual for him to be forced either to act or
to abandon this most wild and terrible thought. (p. 504)
Clyde acts as he does (or fails to act), because of his
temperament, or because of conflicts between his temperament
and his circumstances, not because events permit no alterna
tive.
In contrast to their frequency in Dreiser's other
works, direct statements of a deterministic philosophy are
scarce in An American Tragedy. In The Titan is a typical
example:
It is one of the splendid yet sinister fascinations of
life that there is no tracing to their ultimate sources
all the winds of influence that play upon a given barque—
all the. breaths of chance that fill or desert our bellied
or our sagging sails. We plan and plan, but who by taking
thought can add a cubit to his stature? Who can overcome
or even assist the Providence that shapes our ends, rough
hew them as we may. (pp. 188-189)
In Sister Carrie, Dreiser writes, "Among the forces which
sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is
but a wisp in the wind" (p. 83). But even here, Dreiser re
veals that the determinism he holds is never complete or
final, for the same paragraph continues to assert that man
is "becoming too wise to hearken always to instinct and de
sires, " and that he acts "now by his will and now by his
instincts."
Aside from the half-dozen references to chemism, in An
157
American Tragedy only three similar statements appear, none
of them all-encompassing. Clyde chances to see Roberta's
father through "an ironic and malicious fate" (p. 462). Mr.
Alden, as he hears of Roberta's death, presents a picture of
a man expressing in himself all the pathos of helpless
humanity in the face of the relentless and inexplicable
and indifferent forces of Life! (p. 557)
Clyde's lawyer inserts into the trial records the ironic and
suggestive question, "After all, you didn't make yourself,
did you?" (p. 728).
Because of Dreiser's habit of inserting his philosophic
theories into his writings, the lack of specific support for
a deterministic philosophy in An American Tragedy is sur
prising, especially in light of his letter to Jesse Lasky
(March 10, 1931), wherein he rejects a scenario because it
fails to show the novel as an "inescapable web," and "the
planned culmination of a series of inescapable circumstan
ces" (Letters, II, 510-511). Whatever the weight of what
Dreiser says elsewhere, the world of An American Tragedy is
not solidly deterministic, despite the heavy beating of the
Furies' wings.
Some critics explain the superficial determinism in the
novel as the result of a dichotomy between Dreiser the nov
elist and Dreiser the philosopher. Apparently Lionel Tril
ling accepts this premise, for he can praise the writer while
158
g
he laughs at the thinker. Hoffman insists that all natu
ralistic novelists at times violate their strict determinism
"in accordance with the formal and aesthetic need of the
novel in question" (Modern Novel, p. 30). Eliseo Vivas, in
a most provocative essay, calls Dreiser an "inconsistent
mechanist," since his novels do not entirely conform to his
philosophical statement, but show a life which is more than
mechanical, with characters who are not pawns, in a world
which has values and morality. Vivas concludes, "His mechan
ism is indeed inadequate, but his dramatic vision of the
9
world is fully ripe and mature."
While the theory of a contradiction between Dreiser's
dramatic and philosophic vision may explain the incongrui
ties of inference and statement in his works, the underlying
cause is to be found in Dreiser's constantly changing view
of life and in his attitude toward philosophy. His auto
biography reveals that even as a child he was introspective
g
Trilling's influential article unfortunately carica
tures Dreiser's philosophy: "He thinks as the modern crowd
thinks when it decides to think: religion is nonsense, reli
gionists are fakes, tradition is a fraud, what is man but
matter and impulse, mysterious 'chemisms'?" ("Dreiser and
the Liberal Mind," Nation, CLXII [April 20, 1946], 469).
Trilling overlooks in An American Tragedy exactly that which
he praises in Huckleberry Finn, "the truth of moral passion;
it deals directly with the virtue and depravity of man's
heart" "Huckleberry Finn," The Liberal Imagination (New
York, 1950), p. 106.
9
"Dreiser, An Inconsistent Mechanist," Ethics, XLVII
(July 1938), 499.
159
and speculative, like Clyde Griffiths, a lad who puzzled
over the seemingly incomprehensible flow of life. He was
to search always for an explanation of life's mysteries.
Unschooled as he was, he approached philosophy not with
logic, but with the fervor of a religious devotee. His
rhapsodic attitude is demonstrated by his description of
his Moods Cadenced and Declaimed as "an attempt to achieve
lyrical philosophy" (Letters, II, 730). He admired those
philosophers who were "temperamentally and deeply moved,
like poets, by the phenomena of life by which they find
themselves surrounded."^ Thus Dreiser would take up one
theory after another with great enthusiasm, only to find
that it did not fit all that he saw of life. Despite his
sincerity, and apparently unaware of his inconsistency, he
would present a potpourri of his enthusiasms as a logical
system. Viewing man at times as a result of chemistry (the
compound image is literal), yet he suspected that man might
be subject to supernatural influences:
For all its knowledge of how, science cannot say why.
And furthermore, it starts nervously at the faintest
suggestion that man, powered as a chemical and physi
cal contrivance of exterior forces . . . [may be di
rected] from the cosmos. (Living Thoughts, p. 9)
If there is a pattern in Dreiser's thinking, he moves
from determinism, mechanism, and materialism towards a be-
Introduction, The Living Thoughts of Thoreau (New
York, 1958), p. 9.
lief in order, responsibility, spiritual manifestations, and
even mysticism. Walcutt, who has made the most intensive
study of this phase of Dreiser's thought concludes that his
naturalism is only intermittent, and he finds four distinct
phases of it in his writings. He finds that Dreiser's
novels contain the "antithesis of their materialistic pre
mises," in their "continuous ethical questioning of tradi
tion, dogma, received morality, and social 'justice'"
(p. 180). While readers of his earliest novels might be
surprised to learn that Solon Barnes of The Bulwark (1946)
is a Quaker and a mystic whose values represent a bulwark
against the chaos and evil of the surrounding society, the
reader of An American Tragedy should be less surprised.
Dreiser's search for an understanding of life's mysteries,
like that of Clyde Griffiths, never ended: the philosophic
implications in his novels remain contradictory.
Choice and Responsibility
While Dreiser often denied man's freedom of will and
action, he treated men as if they had free will, and imbued
his characters with a sense of responsibility for their
actions and thought that could stem only from freedom of
action. As Van^'Wyck Brooks observes, "fatalistic as he was,
he acted as if he believed in free will, as if men most cer
161
tainly could control their fate."^ While he asserts that
man does not compound himself and thus cannot always "con
trol the impulses" of his compounds (HeyI Rub-a-dub—dub!
p. 161), he advises man that if he is to "extract any joy
out of his span he must think and plan to make things bet
ter ..." (p. 125).
Norman H. Pearson concludes that Dreiser's determinism
was "always in conflict with the aspirations which he and
12
his characters habitually felt." Of his own father Drei
ser says,
A little success in his own field would have made a most
presentable and satisfactory figure of him, and he could
have forced that success. (Dawn, p. 165)
Of men in general, he writes:
It is as necessary at times to cut away from wealth and
social traditions or feelings of social superiority or
inferiority as it is from poverty and seeming disgrace.
(Dawn, p. 3)
In each case, Dreiser assumes that^ man can act, act signif
icantly, indeed must act, to change his fate. Gerald Wil-
len notes that Dreiser "invariably projected his characters
13
into situations calling for the 'exercise of the will."
"Theodore Dreiser," University of Kansas City Review,
XVI (Spring, 1950), 193.
12
"Idealist in Conflict with Society," Saturday Review
of Literature. XXXII (January 29, 1949), 15.
13
"Dreiser's Moral Seriousness," University of Kansas
City Review, XXIII (Spring, 1957), 181.
162
In An American Tragedy the characters assume that peo
ple make choices, and indeed are compelled to do so. The
opening scene shows the Griffiths' family's unusual reli
gious activities, with the crowd wondering at "the peculi
arity" of their raising their voice "against the vast skep
ticism and apathy of life" (p. 16). When Clyde's mother
asks him for money, he feels all too keenly the weight of
the choice he faces:
For here was fifty dollars in his pocket at the moment,
with Hortense on the one hand and his mother and sister
on the other, and the money would solve his mother's
problem as fully as it would Hortense's, and more re
spectably. How terrible it was not to help her. How
could he refuse her, really? (p. 135)
While it could be argued that Clyde's refusal of his mother
despite his sense of guilt only demonstrates his lack of
free will, it is obvious that personally Clyde feels respon
sible for having made a selfish choice: "It was shameful.
He was low, really mean" (p. 135). In describing Clyde's
desire for Roberta, Dreiser qualifies; it is not overwhelm
ing, but "all but overpowering" (p. 324).
Although Clyde's lawyer excuses him on the ground that
he did not make himself a mental and moral coward, Clyde
sees himself as having been capable of doing better, de
spite the heavy pressures on him. It is not only under fears
of death or God that he judges himself, but even as he steps
from the water of Big Bittern: "For had he not refused to
go to her rescue, and when he might have saved her?" (p. 532).
163
How different is the character of Cowperwood:
That thing conscience, which obsesses and rides some peo
ple to destruction, did not trouble him at all. . . .
There were just two faces to the shield of life from the
point of view of his peculiar mind— strength and weak
ness. Right and wrong? He did not know about those. .
. . Morality and immorality? He never considered them.
(The Financier, p. 271)
Some critics would class Clyde with Cowperwood:
L'assassin de Dreiser, comme son financier et son
<^Genie^ est un mecanique sans ame. Fidele a son
determinisme, 1'auteur purge l'id^e de crime de
toute idee de conscience et de responsabilite.14
Lehan similarly argues that Clyde lacks both consciousness
of his actions and conscience (p. 190). Stovall reports
that in all of Dreiser's novels "characters act to fulfill
their desires without regard to moral principles" (p. 135).
Even two of Dreiser's most thorough critics ignore the grow
ing pressure of the moral issues in An American Tragedy.
Matthiessen asserts that because of Clyde's passiveness, the
novel lacks any "crisis of moral guilt" (p. 216); Walcutt
says that Clyde is never held "morally responsible" (p. 26).
Clyde's own thoughts refute such judgments:
There was no doubt that he had plotted to kill Roberta
there at first— a most dreadful thing as he now saw
it . . . (p. 845)
And unquestionably, . . . he might have saved her. And
would have too, no doubt, if she had been Sondra— or the
Roberta of the summer before. . . . He could see how
terrible all this was now— how much misery and heartache,
apart from the death of Roberta, he had caused. (p. 846)
14 / /
Regis Michaud, Panorama de la litterature Americaine
Contemporaine (Paris, 1926), p. 169.
164
Obviously Clyde, unlike Cowperwood, considers right and
wrong, morality and immorality. His growing sense of respon
sibility for the consequences of his actions is one of his
most appealing qualities. Clyde's strain over the drowning,
both in the plotting and in retrospect, is largely a moral
strain. While fears of the consequences of failure or cap
ture cross his mind, he is constantly horrified by the idea
that he should be contemplating murder, and afterward, by
the possibility of his moral guilt, the thought that he had
been able to "attempt this horrible thing--kill a girl whom
he had once loved" (p. 573). After the trial, so important
is the question of his moral (not legal) guilt, that Clyde
confesses to McMillan, even though he believes the confes
sion might weaken his legal case for an appeal (pp. 844-845).
A few critics recognize Dreiser's serious concern for
moral values. Lloyd Morris says, "It took nearly forty
years for Americans to realize that Dreiser was a stern
15
moralist." According to Edwin Burgum, America has not had
a novelist more concerned with moral problems "since Haw
thorne and Melville, not in James or Howells or Mark
16
Twain." Dreiser was not concerned with superficial mo
rality, but with the complexities of morality which contrib-
15
Postscript to Yesterday (New York, 1947), p. 129.
16
The Novel and the World's Dilemma (New York, 1947),
p. 300.
165
ute to life's compelling mystery.
The moral issues spring largely from the sense of
choice and responsibility which weighs on Dreiser's charac
ters. Freedom is neither complete nor easy. Dreiser's em
phasis on the limitations of choice belied the popular the
ory that any ambitious boy would succeed. Clyde is severely
limited by his range of choices. Uneducated, he has no pro
fession or trade; he cannot join the college set whose ideas
and language are beyond his understanding. His poverty
prevents him from securing an abortion for Roberta or a
cooperative silence from her family. Even more significant
are the limitations of his temperament. Dreiser writes:
there are certain things which some of us cannot do,
however much we may wish or try to. . . . Men do better
once they realize their genuine limitations and cease
reaching for the moon. (Hey! Rub-a-dub-dubI, p. 109)
Choice does not follow a simple path of cause and ef
fect, or a clear chain of decision and action. Samuel Grif
fiths offers a job to Clyde only after a series of motiva
ting impulses. He is taken by Clyde's resemblance to his
own son (p. 76), and impressed by Clyde's confident but
humble manner (p. 194). He feels that he owes the boy some
consideration because the family had slighted Clyde's father
(p. 192). Yet it is only during a family dinner that he
decides in Clyde's favor; his opinion of Clyde rises as he
tries to justify his interest in his nephew to his resentful
son and curious daughters (pp. 176-178). The complexity of
166
motivation and action in An American Tragedy demonstrates the
difficulty of choice in an uncertain world, where man can
seldom fully foresee the consequences of the decisions he is
forced to make.
When moral values ask one to choose against his own
desires, the choice is made more difficult by the selfish
ness fostered by the individualistic mores of society. When
Clyde discovers his sister's hiding place, he is sorry, for
he fears he will be asked to help her (p. 110). His objec
tion to marriage with Roberta springs from his self-concern,
not from a consideration of what would be best for her or
for their child. When Roberta becomes primarily a symbol of
a threat to his cherished dreams, he plots her death, not so
much out of malice toward her, for he pities her to the
last, but out of a desire to rid himself of an encumbering
weight. Clearly his motto is that of society's: "Every
man for himself."
Perhaps to avoid the pain of denying the self, charac
ters hide from the choices they face. Driven by partly
conscious desires, they make apparently minor decisions which
replace the clear and crucial choice. This hiding from
one's self to avoid a painful choice is demonstrated by
Hortense, who wants her coat:
Although she did not actually say to herself that now
she might even be willing to yield herself to him,
still basically that was what was in her mind. (p. 121)
And by Roberta as she rents a room with a private entrance:
167
For, although consciously at this time she was scarcely
willing to face the fact that this room— its geometric
position to the rest of the house— had been of the great
est import to her at the time she first saw it, yet sub
consciously she knew it well enough. (p. 314)
And by Sondra, who thrills to the idea of eloping with
Clyde:
And it was true that in a vague and as yet repressed way
some such thought was beginning to form in Sondra's mind,
(p. 460)
This insight into the psychological machinations of the
minor characters helps make plausible Clyde's drifting for
several months in vain hopes of avoiding a clear refusal of
Roberta. While he toys with his plan to drown her, he is
never certain that he can or will do it. Even as he rushes
to call Roberta after her threatening letter, his conscious
plan is to stall her off again (p. 517). He still doesn't
squarely face the decision as they are riding toward the
lakes:
[How could Roberta suspect] when he himself had not
quite made up his mind as to whether he would be able
to go through with it or not? He only knew he was not
going away with her, and that was all there was to that.
He might not upset the boat, as he had decided on the day
before, but just the same he was not going away with her.
(p. 512)
But Clyde's minor decisions commit him more and more to
one course of action. Not entirely unconsciously he puts
himself into a situation where the final choice is almost
made for him, as Roberta's accidental drowning fulfills his
will for her death. Ironically, the minor chioces he has
made in plotting her drowning cause the jury to think him a
168
murderer; his actions bring about events for which his will,
not circumstances, is ultimately responsible. At the deci
sive moment he is forced to choose whether to go to Rober
ta' s aid or to let her drown, and his self-centered will
provides the answer.
Rather than presenting a world without freedom of will
and action. An American Tragedy demonstrates man's pain in
being forced to make choices. Choice is an all but over
whelming burden when the issues are not clear, or when one's
limitations conflict with his aspirations, or when selfish
desires conflict with moral values. Since the characters
feel responsible for their own thoughts and actions, they
judge others to be similarly responsible. The difficulties
of choice and the sense of responsibility manifested by the
characters create a sense of limited free will in the novel.
Humanistic Values
The novel also presents a world in which humanistic
values are inherent: it refutes the assumption that Drei
ser's kinship with naturalism makes him an amoralist.
Wicher charges that in An American Tragedy, "All distinc
tions of strong and weak, good and evil, wise and foolish
are obliterated" (p. 850). Cargill insists that Dreiser
"believes in nothing" (p. 107), that he espouses "complete
nihilism" (p. 108). Such conclusions are clearly unwarran
ted. In Jennie Gerhardt, Dreiser presents his humanistic
169
credo: "virtue is the wishing well and the doing well unto
others" (p. 93).
In An American Tragedy Dreiser illustrates how indif
ference causes harm to others. The obvious example is
Clyde's plot to get Roberta out of his way. And Clyde him
self suffers the indignities of a menial job and the loneli
ness of an anomolous social position because of the indif
ference of Gilbert and Samuel Griffiths. Clyde's indiffer
ence to his mother's anguished suffering during his sister's
pregnancy appears reprehensible even to him.
Dreiser censures selfishness even where no direct harm
to others results. Clyde as a boy observes that the con
verts of the mission always talk of how God had rescued
them, "never how they had rescued any one else" (p. 25).
Hortense reveals her pettiness after the accident:
And being seized by the notion that her beauty might
have been permanently marred by this accident, she was
at once thrown into a state of selfish panic which
caused her to become completely oblivious, not only
to the misery and injury of the others, but to the
danger of discovery by the police, the injury to the
child, the wreck of this expensive car— in fact every
thing but herself and the probability or possibility
that her beauty had been destroyed. . . . Her one
thought was to reach her own home as speedily as possi
ble in order that she might do something for herself.
(pp. 158-159)
The most vicious selfishness is using another for one's
own ends. Hortense callously encourages Clyde for the pres
ents he buys her. Sondra idly takes him up in order to
create excitement and to spite Gilbert. The district attor
170
ney, eager to make the most of Clyde's trial to gain popular
favor, is guilty of illegal procedures and deliberate lies.
Such behavior appeared natural in the earlier novels, for
Cowperwood rises by using one man (or woman) after another
as a stepping-stone. His success appears almost admirable,
the stamp of his superior force and ability. In An American
Tragedy, however, inhumanity appears despicable, cleverness
and might look shabby beside kindness and right. Esta's
lover is such a shabby person:
one of those vain, handsome, animal personalities, all
clothes and airs, but no morals (no taste, no courtesy,
or real tenderness even). . . . (p. 30)
Later Clyde thinks of him as less than human: "But what
a dog that man was to go off ..." (p. 112).
Because Dreiser values the freedom of each human spir
it, he censures repression and materialism. He pities those
burdened by false religionism and repressive conventions.
The sour piety joined to pushing ambition which character
ized Carrie's brother-in-law appears herein the middle-
class church society to which Grace Marr and her family be
long. In their eyes, social contacts between the sexes are
suspect, and mild amusements sinful. Even before meeting
Clyde, Roberta finds life with the Newtons "narrow and re
stricted " (p. 272). Conventions which may satisfy a settled
married group are especially repressive to the young who
crave companionship, variety, love and amusements. The
prudish standards which prevent free association among the
171
young create either repressed loneliness or the disastrous
secret affairs seen in the case of Esta, or Clyde and Rober
ta.
Materialism also preys on man, since it creates false
standards, and especially appeals to the young, tempting
them to give up moral values and self-respect for an illu
sory happiness. The Hotel Green-Davidson constitutes a
"most dangerous" (p. 58) influence to Clyde, by implying
that
the chief business of life . . . was to attend a theater,
a ball-game in season, or to dance, motor, entertain
friends at dinner, or to travel to New York, Europe,
Chicago, California. (p. 59)
The apparently secure world of wealth in Lycurgus is like
wise an illusion. The family fortunes depend upon business
conditions in a constantly shifting market. Social posi
tion must be maintained by a show of wealth and pleasure.
The Griffiths, who have worked twenty-five years to gain
their position, are threatened by the flashy spending of
the newer arrivals who seek room in the top circle.
Although Clyde envies the freedom of the wealthy to do
as they please, young and old alike in the top circle are
restricted; they must avoid criticism and scandal, and must
associate only with those of the "in" group. Mr. Griffiths
insists the family entertain Clyde lest people criticize
them for neglecting their nephew (p. 385). Sondra cannot
associate openly with Clyde, simply because he is "too poor"
172
(p. 399). The forced associations create false friendships.
Gilbert calls his supposed friends "a bunch of show-offs and
wasters" (p. 383). Slight as is Clyde’s actual relationship
to the Finchley or Griffiths families, both lose their so
cial position because of the scandal; the Griffiths even
feel compelled to move to another city. The "in" group has
no charity for these innocent bystanders to a tragedy. The
staid and solid fronts of the Wykeagy Avenue mansions rest
on shifting foundations, making it doubly tragic that Clyde
has risked so much to gain his "goddess in her shrine of
gilt and tinsel" (p. 344).
Along with the censure of selfishness, repression and
materialism, Dreiser presents positive values which are
basically humanistic: helpfulness, sensitivity, and fair
ness. Much as Clyde likes to believe in his own efforts,
Clyde often needs another's aid. He gets one job through a
stranger, the drug-store manager, another through Ratterer,
and another from his uncle. After the accident, not all the
youths scatter. Ratterer and Hegglund try to free the
others, and Clyde (prompted by Sparser) turns to help and
also looks for Hortense. Clyde's first thought in connec
tion with Roberta's pregnancy is that he will assist her
out of her difficulty (p. 407). Sondra must depend on the
help of her friends in order to arrange occasions to see
Clyde. In the death house, Nicholson explains that the men
depend upon one another: "Be game. We all have to be here
173
— or the whole place would go crazy" (p. 826). Man's human
ity to man prompts one to help another.
Virtue often depends on man's ability to share the
feelings of others. In Clyde's best moments, he loses his
self-concern in his sympathy for another, as in his first
interview with Roberta (p. 266). He grows in sensitivity
after his tragedy. At the news of his conviction, he wor
ries about the sorrow it will bring to his mother. Seeing
her in the death house touches him deeply:
Clyde, shaken to his soul by so much misery,returned
to his cell. His mother. And at her age— and with so
little money— she was going out to try to raise the
money necessary to save him. And in the past he had
treated her so badly— as he now saw. (p. 820)
Clyde's last words to her assert his spiritual peace, an
assurance he actually lacks, but senses that she needs
(p. 869). A quietly moving sentence demonstrates the .
strength of man's sensitivity to others: "And there were
times, too, when even guards couldn't eat" (p. 844).
Another positive value in An American Tragedy is fair
ness, not the selfish demand for fairness for one's self
alone that both Clyde and Roberta manifest, but concern for
fairness for another. Samuel Griffiths hires Clyde partly
out of a feeling that Asa Griffiths had been unfairly left
out in the division of their father's money; later he under
writes Clyde's defense to insure him a fair trial. Although
at the trial Clyde might escape the censure of the conven
tional crowd by impugning Roberta's virtue, he is horrified
174
at the thought of taking unfair advantage of her (p. 650).
In the dark and tragic world of the novel there are moments
of light when men wish well and do well to one another.
Suggestions of Supernaturalism
That beyond the purely material world supernatural
forces may operate is suggested in An American Tragedy. Al
though Dreiser says that religion is a "ghastly fiction"
{Hev1 Rub-a-dub-dub1, p. 255), in the novel the most reli
gious characters, Elvira Griffiths and McMillan, are not
"hopelessly incompetent and unintelligent" as Shafer charges
all of Dreiser's religious people are (p. 162). Clyde's
mother supports her family and gives lectures to earn funds
for Clyde's appeal. Dreiser's description of her is moving
and sympathetic:
her strong, brown face molded in homely and yet con
vinced and earnest lines— a figure out of the early
Biblical days of her six thousand-year-old world—
earnestly directing her thought to that imaginary
Throne. . . . And praying by the quarter and the half
hour that she be given strength and understanding and
guidance. . . . (p. 798)
McMillan, far from being stupid or hypocritical, is
"intense and vital" (p. 862).
A strange, strong, tense, confused, merciful and too,
after his fashion beautiful soul; sorrowing with misery
yearning toward an impossible justice.(p. 835)
As Van Wyck Brooks asks, "how many other American novelists
have created a Protestant minister who was vital, saintly,
175
17
and intense?" When the conventional church refuses help
in this unpopular and unsavory case, McMillan pleads with
the authorities on Clyde's behalf. It is he who breaks the
news of the failure of Clyde's appeals, and who stays with
Clyde to his last moments.
Like the appealing religious character in Dreiser's
1 fl
1901 sketch, "A Doer of the Word," Clyde's mother and Mc
Millan are less concerned with dogma than with good deeds.
Yet they possess a mysterious force and are so uncommonly
good as to be incredible, were it not for Dreiser's sugges
tion that they are mystically supported by their intense
faith and perhaps by the supernatural power they acclaim.
Part of life's mystery for Dreiser himself is its tan
talizing suggestion of the supernatural. His six short
plays he titled Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural
(New York, 1916). He was fascinated by the apparent occa
sional validity of ghosts, portents and spiritual manifes
tations. He asserts the reality of the non-material world:
For in the face of all inductive science and the strong
and yet to me narrow walls of all naturalistic philoso
phy— the wholly electrical structure of life with its
electrons and atoms— I hold that behind these seemingly
foolish predictions which "came true" moves something
which is far more solidly real, if less material or elec
trical than that which appears here. . . .19
^^The Confident Years: 1885-1915 (New York, 1952), p. 318.
18
Best Short Stories of Theodore Dreiser (New York,
1961), pp. 124-141.
^"Giff," A Gallery of Women, I (New York, 1929), p. 261.
176
The suggestion of that "something" beyond appears in An
American Tragedy in Clyde's enigmatic visitation at Big Bit
tern. As he rows Roberta into a quiet pool, he is struck by
its "insidious beauty" which suggests death to him, and he
feels "the grip of some seemingly strong, and yet friendly
sympathetic, hands laid firmly on his shoulders" (p. 527).
Lulled by their warmth and strength he seems "to slip away
from the reality of all things" (p. 528). When the hands
leave, a vision of Roberta struggling in the water appears
before him. These strange experiences, which appear to be
more than a psychological aberration, along with Clyde's
frequent thoughts of God and an after-life suggest the exist
ence of supernatural forces, even though they may be mys
terious and beyond human certainty.
The Grandeur of Life Itself
Despite tragic events and the dark moods of the protag
onist, the novel is not entirely pessimistic, for it im
parts a sense of the awe and grandeur of life itself.
Roberta is conscious of the delight of being alive to life's
sensations and experiences:
And in the orchard of a spring day later between her
fourteenth and eighteenth years when the early May sun
was making pink lamps of every aged tree and the ground
was pinkly carpeted with the falling and odorous petals,
she would stand and breathe and sometimes laugh, or even
sigh, her arms upreached or thrown wide to life. To be
alive! To have youth and the world before one. (p. 269)
Even the harried Clyde has moments of pleasure so intense
177
that he feels he is in Paradise, his valid (though fleeting)
joy not always dependent upon circumstances. On the ferris
wheel Clyde and Roberta feel "a kind of ecstasy which was
all out of proportion to the fragile, gimcrack scene"
(p. 306). As Dreiser asks in Dawn, "When is life utterly
without charm?" (p. 16).
Even in the death house there is an awe of human life,
no matter how meager one's existence or how insignificant
one's character. The process of choking out life appears
cruel and inhuman: "It moved automatically like a machine
without the aid or the hearts of men" (p. 866). After all
his moments of torment Clyde thinks, "But still— still— was
not life sweet?" (p. 846). The terrors of the convicted men
demonstrate their pain at leaving life, their fears of
death. With but eight days left, Clyde thinks,
But life— life— how was one to do without that— the
beauty of the days— of the sun and rain— of work, love,
energy, desire. (p. 864)
Dreiser says elsewhere:
I still rise to testify to the aesthetic perfection of
this thing. . . . which we call Life. . . . It can and
does achieve an aesthetic whole— beauty no less— and via
the same elements that are in lice and bedbugs as well
as in the most distant suns or sidereal systems— in fire
and flowers, in Shelley and Christ.20
Clyde finds life sweetened by the companionship and
understanding of a fellow human being. In his darkest hours
20
"What I Believe," Forum, LXXXII (November 1929), 320.
178
he reaches out to his once-rejected mother:
But now . . . now . . . oh, he needed her now— so much%
Quite everyone, as it seemed now, had forsaken him. He*
was terribly, terribly alone. (p. 795)
At his sentencing he is "sustained and heartened by her
presence" (p. 809). In the death house, Clyde finds a
friend:
But he was drawn to Nicholson. He was beginning to think
after a time— a few days— that this lawyer— his presence
and companionship during the exercise hour— whenever they
chanced to be in the same set— could help him to endure
this. . . . Because of his interest in Nicholson, he was
beginning to feel slightly sustained at least. . . .
(p. 827)
But Nicholson is soon executed. And Clyde is left to feel
the terrible pain of loneliness.
Then his mother sends McMillan to him. Despite the
guilt which Clyde feels in the presence of this minister's
beautiful character and stern moral code, he is "anxious to
retain his interest and visits" (p. 844). At times Clyde
feels that he would go mad "except for McMillan who appeared
devoted to him— so kind, appealing and reassuring too at
times" (p. 847). The sweetness of human companionship is
also shown in the final scene, where Clyde's mother and
Esta's son walk together:
a boy of not more than seven or eight— very round-eyed
and alert, who, because of some sympathetic understanding
between him and his elderly companion seemed to desire
to walk close to her. . . . (p. 871)
The onward flow of life and the presence of understanding
companionship in this scene bring to the close of the novel
a quiet optimism.
179
Despite evidence to the contrary in the novel itself
and in his other works, the world which Dreiser presents is
not entirely materialistic, pessimistic or mechanistic. An
American Tragedy posits a world in which man, hemmed in as
he is by circumstances and drawn by his own desires, still
makes choices of thought and action for which he feels
morally responsible. In this world life is difficult, but
not entirely dark; life is brightened by the unselfish care
of one man for another and is sweetened by companionship
and understanding. Even in dark hours life itself has value
and a measure of beauty.
Chapter VII
CLYDE AS A TRAGIC FIGURE
In addition to technical and philosophical questions,
the novel must be judged finally by the validity and
strength of its insight into universal problems. The perma
nence of Dreiser's achievement in An American Tragedy de
pends on the vitality and comprehensiveness of its tragic
vision. Is the novel a period piece as Matthiessen (p. 211)
and Edwin Muir suggest,^ or "a representative document for
all time" (Snell, p. 244)? How perceptive, how universal,
and how moving is its view of life?
The Significance of Man
Despite its dark events and the ordinary hero it pre
sents, the novel imparts the conviction that man and his des
tiny matter, even "the least of these." Dreiser's feeling
for the importance of each man no matter what his apparent
worth imbues his characters with dignity and significance.
Even in the death house there are no grotesques, no carica
tures; all are human beings, drawn with pity and sympathy.
Dreiser's respect for human dignity is revealed in his com-
~ * ~ The Structure of the Novel (London, 1928), p. 116.
180
181
ments on an experience at New York's Bellevue Hospital:
I think the most sickening thing I ever saw was cash
gambling among two young medics and a young nurse in
charge of the receiving ward as to whether the next
patient . . . would arrive alive or dead. . . . As
the stretcher was pulled out and set down on the stone
step under the archway the three pushed about and hung
over, feeling the heart and looking at the eyes and lips,
now pale blue as in death, quite as one might crowd about
a curious specimen of plant or animal. (Newspaper Days,
p. 496)
Dreiser's own refusal to view man objectively (as the
naturalists attempted to do), as a "curious specimen,"
brings to the novel a sense that the destiny of Clyde and
company matters,for their own sakes, quite as much as for
the insight they provide into the mystery of human existence.
Walcutt discerns in Dreiser's works the conviction that "man
is the end and measure of all things," even of life itself
(p. 186):
Dreiser is primarily a novelist, a student of humanity
and only incidentally a philosopher. Human values are
never subordinated to philosophical implications.
(p. 192)
Dreiser's pity for men, small and great, whose flaws
and weaknesses he sees so clearly, has often been praised.
Vernon L. Parrington cites Dreiser's "profound morality—
2
the morality of truth and pity and mercy." Ludlow writes
that Dreiser's finest quality is "this refusal to condemn,
this understanding and sympathy" (p. 6). But pity and sym-
2
Main Currents in American Thought, III (New York,
1930), 356-357.
182
pathy, with their suggestion of condescension and sentimen
tality, do not convey the strength of Dreiser's attitude.
He does not look down upon those who are beaten by life; he
looks up to them. He marvels at those who, as he wrote in
"Sanctuary":
In spite of their unfortunate beginnings, the slime in
which primarily and without any willing of their own they
had been embedded and from which nearly all were seeking
to crawl upward, and bravely enough, they had heart and
faith in Iife.3
Dreiser stands in awe of the weak and the beaten, in
awe of their massive struggles against impossible barriers,
in awe of the depth of their misery. Moreover he is able to
communicate the full strength of his feeling for man, partly
because of his own deep sincerity. He writes:
I never can, and never want to bring myself to the
place where I can ignore the sensitive a-nd seeking
individual in his pitiful struggle with nature,—
with his enormous urges and his pathetic equipment.
(Letters, I, 308)
But Dreiser's technique also helps to make the troubles of
an obscure lad like Clyde Griffiths seem a weighty matter.
Dreiser overcomes the considerable technical difficulty of
engaging the reader's sympathy for his weak, unheroic pro
tagonist by placing the focus of the novel primarily in
Clyde's sensitive and troubled consciousness. Booth dis
cusses how Jane Austen in Emma similarly overcomes the prob
lem of "maintaining sympathy despite almost crippling faults"
^Chains (New York, 1927), p. 28.
183
(p. 245), by presenting the story through Emma's focus:
"The sustained inside view leads the reader to hope for
good fortune for the character with whom he travels"
(p. 246).
Ludlow points out that Dreiser wins our forgiveness for
Clyde "by letting us see into Clyde's soul— his wistful
dreams, his weakness, his hungers, his vanity, his fears"
(p. 6). In all three books the tension of the events plays
against Clyde's changing moods. In Book I, he battles in
wardly over the morality of his actions and desires, for he
considers the pleasures he craves somewhat coarse and prob
ably evil. By Book III, the ever-swelling undertone of
Clyde's introspection becomes a major theme, as he attempts
to assess himself and life. The terrible uncertainty of his
guilt is as full of pathos as is his search for an ever-elu-
sive faith; to the very end he ponders and questions— and
trembles. Although at times seared by his guilt, never can
he rest in the faith lovingly pressed on him by his mother
* and McMillan. The physical action gives place to moral and
spiritual crisis in the pilgrimage of Clyde Griffiths.
Perhaps it is Dreiser's ability to convey his sense of
the quality and depth of human suffering which prompts
Charles C. Baldwin to say that "more than any other, Dreiser
4
moves me." Powys describes Dreiser's success m achieving
4
The Men Who Make our Novels (New York, 1924), p. 141.
184
sympathy for Clyde:
To taste the full flavour, the terrible "organic chemi
cal" flavour, like the smell of a stock-yard, which
emanates from this weird book, it is necessary to feel,
as Dreiser seems to feel— and indeed, as we are taught
by the faith of our fathers— that the soul of the most
ill-conditioned and raw-sensed of our race, engendered by
man, born of woman, has a potentiality of suffering equal
with the noblest- (p. 335)
The novel effectively conveys Dreiser's conviction that the
feelings and destiny of even a weak boy like Clyde Griffiths
are of universal and ultimate importance. Dreiser's own
sympathy aided by his artistic technique creates in Clyde a
figure who engages the reader’s attention and sympathy.
The Extent and Sicrnificance of Clyde's Weakness
Critics of the novel often cite the weakness of its
central figure as proof of the novel's determinism, and its
lack of tragic import. Spiller charges that the novel "de
scends to the lowest possible plane of pure mechanistic de
terminism" because Dreiser removes from Clyde "the force of
5
his own will" (p. 1203). Matthiessen maintains that Clyde
is below tragedy, since he is too weak (p. 207), since his
struggle lacks the drama of conflict (p. 215). Hoffman
stresses Clyde's passivity, his "absence of willed partici-
£
pation": "Clyde Griffiths does not will the destruction of
5
Spiller's chapter on Dreiser is "based, with permis
sion, on an article by James T. Farrell" (p. 1405).
0
"The Scene of Violence: Dostoevsky and Dreiser,"
Modern Fiction Studies, VI (Spring 1960), 104.
185
Roberta; he merely wishes it, and she obliges him" (p. 102).
Powys asserts that we pity Clyde as we would "a helpless
vicious animal driven to the slaughterhouse" (p. 335).
Such interpretations of the novel undervalue the
strength of Clyde's will and apparently ignore the evidence
of his own thoughts which show clearly that he does con
sciously will the destruction of Roberta, that however con
fusedly he acts, he does plot to drown her. As planned he
brings her to the lake where, although he fails to strike
her, he deliberately swims away as she flounders in the
s' '
water. Although that action is overtly less brutal than
striking a blow, it is none the less decisive and in full
accord with his will for her death. Weak and befuddled as
he may be at times, Clyde is not helpless nor passive. Lat
er his tormented thoughts clearly reveal his sense of
responsibility for his desires and his actions.
The significance of Clyde's weakness is that it gives
to his experience plausibility and universality. Here is no
vicious, clever animal, criminal, or automaton. Clyde is
not a clinical case,but a rather normal young man— too much
like you and me for comfort. Dreiser shows how the pres
sures of society and his own desires bring this sensitive
boy to the abyss of evil and cruelty. Beach describes him
as "a young man in no way unusual," natural in all his de
sires and actions, without being in the least a criminal
type (p. 325). Carl Van Doren insists that despite the
186
pressure of circumstances in the novel, the "final impres
sion" is the universality of the experiences of Clyde:
To read about him is to walk a tight rope over a gulf of
imagined experiences, shuddering to think how little
separates those who cross from those who fall.7
In probing the mind and motives and actions of Clyde
Griffiths, Dreiser hands to the reader a disturbing mirror
image of himself. Krutch points out that Clyde is "caught
in a web of pleasant little sins at the behest of the common
desires indulged by half mankind" (p. 152). Edmund Fuller
complains that most modern novels fail to show "any chain of
moral cause and effect by which you could get from where you
8
are to where their characters are," a criticism which fits,
for example, Camus's The Stranger, or Faulkner's Light in
August, or Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, or Drei
ser's own The Financier and The "Genius". Where Mersault,
Joe Christmas, Frankie Machine, Cowperwood and Witla are
difficult to identify with because of their fragmented or
grotesque personalities, Clyde Griffiths is disturbingly
real, close, and familiar. The reader shares in his weak
ness and in his helplessness. Walcutt analyzes the sense in
which Clyde's character enhances the universality of his
tragedy:
7The American Novel 1789-1939 (New York, 1940), p. 258.
Q
Man in Modern Fiction (New York, 1958), p. 44.
187
rAn American Tragedy] is first of all a work of art, the
tragedy of Clyde Griffiths, a picture of life that is
tragic because the protagonist is at once responsible
(as any human being feels another to be) and helpless
(as the philosopher views events). (p. 211)
The Tragedy of Modern Man
Clyde's story is rich in the elements of tragedy. He
is, in many ways, a modern Everyman. He kills not out of
animalism, nor out of devotion to a mistaken ideal— such
motives are seldom overt in civilized man. But more insid
ious is the all-pervading self-centeredness, which causes
one to see all events and other persons as either a means or
a hindrance to one's personal satisfactions. Clyde's real
crime is his callous disregard for Roberta's difficulties,
for which he is at least partially responsible. Although
he cannot kill her deliberately, he can ignore her dying
pleas and swim away to pursue his own ends. The "acciden
tal" drowning scene is thus not only literal, but symbolic
of Clyde's real feeling for Roberta.
That apparently innocuous indifference (Clyde has noth
ing against Roberta except that she stands in his way) can
lead to the most brutal crimes is all too apparent in the
modern world. Clyde's guilt is shared not only by all those
in the novel, but by his readers as well.
Like many moderns, Clyde lives in an illusory world.
His dreams are more solid and more appealing than his daily
life. Dreiser had originally called his story Mirage (Mat-
o
188
thiessen, p. 185) . As Dreiser says in The "Genius. 1 1 "Noth
ing else is so moving, so vital, so painful as a dream"
(p. 725). Witla searches all his life for an impossible
dream— to possess a true beauty of eighteen years. The old
er he grows the more feverish and yet more impossible his
dream.
The word dream appears over and over in An American
Tragedy, from Clyde's earliest dreams of "a girl of his
own" (p. 84), to his recognizing his desire for Sondra as "a
vain— impossible dream" (p. 849). His feelings for Sondra
are almost always referred to as a dream, "his splendid
dream" (p. 467). He dreams also of wealth, luxury, and
success.
His illusory view of life leads him to a misunderstand
ing of himself and of others. As a youth he shrugs off his
family because they can "do nothing" (p. 179). Yet he gets
a job from his uncle, and when his own efforts land him in
jail, his uncle pays for his defense; his mother gives him
emotional and material support after his conviction. He
assumes that it is only because he is poor that he cannot do
exactly as he wishes (p. 292). While Clyde thinks that the
murder of Roberta will bring him freedom, success and love,
where marriage to her would destroy him, the reverse is clo
ser to the truth. Even in the death house Clyde prefers to
read romances; symbolically Nicholson sends him a copy of
The Arabian Nights (p. 833).
189
Clyde also represents modern man in his attempt to
find a value system in a world of uncertain values. He re
jects his parents' code as illusory, yet he cannot shake off
a feeling that God may be around the corner after all. He
constantly questions himself and looks to society around him
to furnish standards. Too often he measures his conduct not
by self-respect, but by expediency, and by what others will
see. Burgum points out that Clyde lives on two levels:
He cannot make the vulgar decision to throw her off; nor,
seeing his dream of social advancement through marriage
fall through, can he bring himself to marry her. He is
caught in that hopeless contradiction between respecta
bility and virtue, which is our worst American inherit
ance. (p. 300)
Clyde's earliest feelings of guilt over Roberta's death are
mingled with his fears of public exposure. Recent sociolog
ical studies bear out Becker's comment that Clyde's tragedy
is that there are so many like him, "people without inner
direction" (p. 125).^
In the novel, as in life, it is not simply a matter of
having a moral code and then being strong enough to live by
it, for life's exigencies constantly throw one into uncer
tainty. Roberta finds herself perplexed:
And as honest and punctilious as she might ordinarily be
in matter of truth-telling and honest-dealing, plainly
9
David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (Garden City, 1950).
Riesman concludes that the American cultural patterns to
gether with the growth of technology are creating more and
more persons who are "other-directed," as distinguished
from inner-directed or tradition-directed.
190
this was one of those whirling tempests of fact and real
ity in which the ordinary charts and compasses of moral
measurement were for the time being of small use.
(p. 422)
Dreiser's world is never simple. David B. Davis asserts
that by its complexity:
this world challenged man's resources and revealed more
dignity than the cut-and-dried world of the idealists, ■ ■ 0
where individuals were good if they wanted to be good.
The ambiguity which Dreiser deliberately builds into
the question of Clyde's guilt symbolizes the confusion and
complexity of the moral world. As McMillan perceives, Clyde
is neither precisely guilty nor entirely innocent. Even
after Clyde's death he is troubled by the uncertainty of
his judgment:
Had he done right? Had his decision before Governor
Waltham been truly sound, fair or merciful? Should
he have said to him— that perhaps— perhaps— there had
been those other influences playing upon him? . . .
Was he never to have mental peace again, perhaps?
(p. 871)
According to Elias, the ambiguity of Clyde's guilt was, for
Dreiser, the issue itself: "Justice was not to be found
clearly on one side or the other" (p. 222). The moral world
is complex and confusing to any man, despite his preconcep
tions or his strength of character.
A moral abyss yawns before every man in the conduct of
his daily affairs. With horror Clyde gradually perceives
"*"°"Dreiser and Naturalism Revisited, " in Kazin, Sta t
ure, p. 235.
191
the havoc and pain he has brought into dozens of lives. In
volved as man is with other persons, he daily faces possi
bilities for doing good or harm to his fellows. It is not
only to the leaders of society that the lives and happiness
of others are entrusted, but to every man in his own sphere.
Tragic Insight
Despite its many elements of tragedy, Clyde's experi
ence would fall short of the tragic were he as unaware of
its significance as some critics insist. Lehan maintains
that Clyde lacks all awareness:
Clyde never understands the meaning of events which befall
him. Clyde lacks conscience because he lacks conscious
ness, which, in An American Tragedy, exists only on the
authorial level. Whereat the reader can anticipate
Clyde's fate, Clyde himself is always insensitive to what
is about to happen. (p. 190)
But here is precisely the tragedy: Clyde, like countless
others, with his dim, cloudy understanding of himself and
of life, cannot anticipate and thus avoid tragedy. True
Clyde is not prescient, but was Oedipus?
All literature tends to be concerned with the question of
reality— I mean simply the old opposition between reality
and appearance, between what really is and what merely
seems. "Don't you see?" is the question we want to shout
at Oedipus. . . . H
The real drama of An American Tragedy is not the crime
and trial, but the efforts of Clyde's suffering conscience
Lionel Trilling, "Manners, Morals, and the Novel" in
William V. O'Connor, ed., Forms of Modern Fiction (Minnea
polis, 1948), p. 146.
192
to meet and understand the moral and practical puzzles of
his existence. Far from being unaware, Clyde before and
after every act, is tortured by questioning and self-recrim
ination. His torment brings him to the edge of sanity at
the time of Roberta's drowning. Apparently Dreiser believed
that the original murder was at least partly a result of
12
temporary insanity, and he suggests the possibility that
Clyde was very nearly temporarily insane.
The dizzying lure of Sondra and the desperate threats
of Roberta's condition produce a mental strain which blurs
Clyde's sense of reality and morality. Sondra's hint of an
elopement makes him "a little wild": "The thought was like
some sweet, disarranging poison to Clyde. It fevered and
all but betrayed him mentally" (p. 460). When Clyde reads
of the drowning and finds himself wishing Roberta had been
the victim, he immediately rejects the thought as horrible
and criminal; yet the idea possesses him, and he returns to
it again and again: "But as for him accepting such an evil
suggestion and acting upon it . . . never!" (p. 479). A
last passionate scene with Sondra shows the extent of his
conflict:
12
Dreiser writes, "Not Chester Gillette, as I said to
myself at the time, planned this crime, but circumstances
and laws and rules and conventions which to his immature and
more or less futile mind were so terrible, so oppressive,
that they were destructive to his reasoning powers" ("I Find
the Real American Tragedy," Mystery, IX [February, 1935],
89) .
193
At this point it was that a nervous and almost deranged
look— never so definite or powerful at any time before
in his life— the border-line look between reason and
unreason, no less— so powerful that the quality of it was
even noticeable to Sondra— came into his eyes. He looked
sick, broken, unbelievably despairing. (p. 487)
The chapter which dramatizes Clyde's temptation begins
with a paragraph describing his state of mind:
the reason not actually toppling from its throne, still
totters or is warped or shaken— the mind befuddled to
the extent that for the time being, at least, unreason
or disorder and mistaken and 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 tem
porary unreason in its wake. (p. 500)
The scene at Big Bittern is fraught with suggestions of
Clyde's loss of: mental and nervous orientation. As they
step into the rowboat, he is
in a confused and turbulent state mentally, scarcely
realizing the clarity or import of any particular thought
or movement. (p. 523)
Roberta seems unreal, "an almost nebulous figure . . . step
ping down into an insubstantial rowboat upon a purely idea
tional lake" (p. 523). After her drowning his state is
almost one of complete mental derangement, mainly caused
by fear and confusion in his own mind as to whether he
did or did not bring about her untimely end. . . . He
was so confused— mentally and nervously sick. (pp. 570-
571)
Despite the momentary tottering of his reason under the
stress of his dilemma, Clyde's character then undergoes a
gradual maturing, a development which has been foreshadowed
by the constant pressure of his sensitive conscience through
. 194 •
out Books I and II. He quickly begins to catch that new
vision of life and self which a significant tragic experi
ence brings. Even before his capture, Clyde regains a sense
of reality. He realizes that the dark thoughts and deed of
Big Bittern will forever stalk him;
And all his life he would have this with him, now,—
this thought! He would never be able to shake it off—
never, never, never. And he had not thought of that,
before. It was a terrible thing in its way, just that,
wasn't it? (p. 573)
The bare newspaper accounts enable him to see his actions
through the eyes of others— "such a dastardly murder as this
now appeared to be" (p. 589).
Whereas even after his conviction he retains a measure
of shame over his mother's shabbiness, in prison he gains a
more mature sympathy for her:
Whatever her faults or defects, after all she wai’ &^his
mother, wasn't she? And she had come to his aid. Let
the public think what it would. Was he not in the
shadow of death and she at least had not deserted him.
. . . And yet how much and how indifferently he had
sinned against her! Oh, how much. And still here
she was— his mother still anxious and tortured and
yet loving and seeking to save his life by writing
up his own conviction for a western paper. No longer
did the shabby coat and somewhat stolid and crude ges
tures seem the racking and disturbing things they had
so little time since. (p. 807)
In his growing maturity, Clyde abandons his grandiose am
bitions. He comes to look on his former aspirations to
luxury and social success as a "vain— impossible dream"
(p. 849). He hopes that if ever free he can go far away
and "recover himself in some small way" (p. 841).
195
Clyde's experience reveals to him that he is not a
special case with privileges not granted to others. When
he had visited the brothel, he told himself that he was not
really the sort of person who belonged there, just as later
he plotted to drown Roberta while telling himself that he
was not a murderer. As the stark selfishness of his motives
and deeds becomes apparent to him, he grows in perception
of his own limitations and loses some of his selfishness in
a new concern for others. He begins to take responsibility
for his grandiose illusions and the crime to which they led
him, as he realizes how much misery he has caused. Where
formerly he avoided issues or excused himself, he finally
comes to face his guilt.
Despite his terrors of death in light of the uncer
tainty of his religious beliefs, he faces the failure of
his appeal with courage, "feeling not as distrait or weak as
at first he had imagined he would be" (p. 859). His first
thoughts are of his mother and he manifests dignity and
courage for her sake throughout his final days. The Clyde
who walks to the death chamber is a different person from
the boy who swam away from a drowning girl at Big Bittern.
Had his foresight equaled his hindsight, Clyde might
never have been brought to tragedy, but such is the pattern
of life for many a youth and far too many an adult. As
Fuller says,
Dreiser sees the good and evil in the American era he
196
portrays; the social tragedy is that there are those like
Clyde who can see them dimly if at all. (p. 42)
Clyde is not a tragic hero in the traditional sense. He
lacks the stature of the Aristotlean protagonist. He cannot
bow before his fate like Oedipus, nor rise to bless his
accusers like Billy Budd. But he gains stature as a tragic
figure from the depth of his anguish as he questions him
self and the universe. Kazin writes,
Dreiser's individuals are large because they still have
an enormous capacity for suffering— -and for realizing
their suffering. In their defenselessness they recapture
the reality of the human person. (Introduction, An Ameri
can Tragedy, p. 17)
Clyde's story also lacks a firm resolution. But as he dies
in torment and uncertainty, he symbolizes modern man with
his hopes, dreams, limitations, and confusions, facing the
mystery of life and groping for an answer.
CONCLUSION
An American Tragedy deserves a more careful reading
than some critics have given it, critics apparently prej
udiced by preconceptions based on Dreiser's earlier novels.
This novel rises above the earlier works in its technique
and in its tragic view of life as it presents in Clyde
Griffiths a representative of modern man. Unlike the ear
lier novels, An American Tragedy successfully treats endur
ing and universal themes:
Meanwhile, in this time of supposedly vanished values
and diminished themes, I assert the great, continuing
immemorial theme of the writer--the exploration of his
own nature. The great questions are constantly before
him made more searching than ever by the conditions of
the world. What am I? Who am I? Whence have I come?
Where am I going? Why? (Fuller, pp. 64-65)
Clyde Griffiths gains stature and significance as he strug
gles with these questions. His tragedy lies not only in the
dark events of his brief life, but in the enormity of the
questions he raises, and in his realization of his inadequa
cy to cope with them.
An American Tragedy cannot be called a perfect work:
its philosophy is ambiguous, its social commentary dated, and
its technique flawed. Yet the novel endures and moves read
ers of succeeding generations because it is successful in
the higher aims of art:
197
But the artist appeals to that part of our being which, is
not dependent on wisdom, to that in us which is a gift
and not an acquisition-— and, therefore, more permanently
enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and won
der, to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the
latent feeling of fellowship with all creation— and to
the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that
knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to
the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspira
tions, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men
to each other, which binds together all humanity— the dead
to the living and the living to the unborn. 1-3
For the reader, as for Clyde, the old verities are passe,
but the puzzle of life and existence continues. The novel's
tragic view of modern man, its compelling story, and its
considerable technical achievement make An American Tragedy
more than a period study: it is an enduring masterpiece of
the modern novel.
13
Joseph Conrad, "Preface to The Migger of the Narcis
sus, 1 1 in Howard E. Hugo, ed., Aspects of Fiction (Boston,
1962), p. 110.
b i b l i o g r a p h y
j T
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Creator Dustman, Marjory Peterson (author)

Core Title Theodore Dreiser'S 'An American Tragedy': A Study

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format dissertations (aat)

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor McElderry, Bruce R. (committee chair), Mahl, Mary R. (committee member), Pullias, Earl Vivon (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-154015

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Legacy Identifier 6507225.pdf

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