UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL MAYOR DE SAN MARCOS

Universidad Decana de América

Literary Analysis

An American Tragedy
By Theodore Dreiser

Work done by:

RODEN VELANDO MARY EDITH VALERIE

ROMERO CACHIQUE EDITH SONIA

RONCEROS HIDALGO ENRIQUE

Group “F”

Professor:

CABRERA GONZALES LUZ ELIZABETH

November 2010
 An American Tragedy Analysis

By: Valerie Roden, Edith Romero and Enrique Ronceros

Plot

An American Tragedy tells the story of a bellboy, Clyde Griffiths, indecisive like
Hamlet, who sets out to gain success and fame. After an automobile accident, Clyde is
employed by a distant relative, owner of a collar factory. He seduces Roberta Alden, an
employee at the factory, but falls in love with Sondra Finchley, a girl of the local
aristocracy. Roberta, now pregnant, demands that Clyde marry her. He takes Roberta
rowing on an isolated lake and in this dreamlike sequence 'accidentally' murders her.
Clyde's trial, conviction, and execution occupy the remainder of the book. Dreiser
points out that materialistic society is as much to blame as the murderer himself. Dreiser
based his study on the actual case of Chester Gillette (see
http://www.craigbrandon.com/MITAhome.html), who murdered Grace Brown - he hit
her with a tennis racket and pushed her overboard at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack
in July 1906. An American Tragedy was banned in Boston in 1927.
First Published: 1925

Type of Work: Novel

Type of Plot: Naturalism
Time of Work: Early twentieth century
Setting: Kansas City, Chicago, and Lycurgus, New York
Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Naturalistic literature
Subjects: Values, United States or Americans, Love or romance, Murder or homicide,
Twentieth century, Chicago, Moral conditions, Ethics, Attorneys, Factory management

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Tragedy

Author: Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute,

Indiana, the ninth of ten children. His parents were
poor. Dreiser's schooling was erratic, as the family
moved from town to town. He left home when he
was 16 and worked at whatever jobs he could find.
With the help of his former teacher, he was able to
spend the year 1889-1890 at Indiana University.
Dreiser left after only a year. He was, however, a
voracious reader, and the impact of such writers as
Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and
Freud influenced his thought and his reaction
against organized religion.

In 1892 Dreiser started to write for the Chicago Globe, and moved to a better position
with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. During this period he wrote the short story 'Nigger
Jeff', probably based on a lynching he witnessed. The story was published in Ainslee, a
small monthly journal, and collected in FREE AND OTHER STORIES (1918).

In 1898 Dreiser married Sara White, a Missouri

schoolteacher, but the marriage wa s unhappy.
Dreiser separated permanently from her in 1909,
but never earnestly sought a divorce. In his own
life Dreiser practised his principle that man's
greatest appetite is sexual - the desire for women
led him to carry on several affairs at once. While
in Kentucky reporting on coal miners' strike, he
was charged with adultery. His relationship with
Yvette Szekely Eastman is recorded in Dearest
Wilding by Yvette Eastman (1995) - she was 16
and Dreiser 40 years older when they met.

Taken from:
http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/dre
iser/tdbio.html
Main Characters:

Actors Patricia Racette (Roberta Alden) and Nathan Gunn (Clyde Griffiths) during the representation of the
Opera in Two Acts “An American Tragedy”, Libretto by Gene Scheer, based on the Theodore Dreiser
novel (http://www.tobiaspicker.com/aatphotos.html)

• Clyde Griffiths: The novel's main character, Clyde is driven all his life in pursuit
of his idea of the American dream. He is materialistic and pleasure-seeking, and
he lacks any strong moral center. He is willing to lie and to indulge in unethical
and illegal behavior in pursuit of his goals, and he repeatedly runs from
difficulties, especially those he creates for himself. For Clyde, there is no clear
line between reality and fantasy, right and wrong. To escape his sordid life, he
daydreams of wealth and luxury. To live with his acts of cowardice, he
rationalizes them.

• Roberta Alden: Roberta is a poor, shy, somewhat naive girl who works in the
factory where Clyde is a supervisor. She is prettier and more sensitive than most
of the "factory girls," but these qualities do not help her prospects in life; her
poverty and her position as a factory worker consign her to a low position in
society.

Although Roberta hopes to improve her lot in life by getting an education and by
marrying as well as she can, she repeatedly breaks the rules of social conduct.
She talks with the foreign workers at the factory, which is considered taboo.

• Sondra Finchley: A wealthy and beautiful young woman who lives in Lycurgus,
Sondra personifies all the things Clyde values and desires: money and luxuries,
social status, and a life of carefree pleasure. Clyde so desperately wants Sondra
and all that she possesses that he plots to murder Roberta when Sondra shows an
interest in him.
 When Clyde arrives in Lycurgus, Sondra quickly and correctly sizes him up as a
poor relation of the local Griffiths, and she has no interest in him. However,
when she becomes upset with Clyde's cousin Gilbert, she decides to feign
interest in Clyde to irritate Gilbert.

• Titus Alden: Roberta's father, Titus Alden is a poor farmer. He wants revenge
for Roberta's death.

• Alvin Belknap: Belknap is Clyde's defense attorney. It is Clyde's wealthy uncle,

Samuel Griffiths, who hires Belknap.

• Hortense Briggs: Hortense is an attractive but coarse Kansas City girl who
manipulates Clyde's emotions to get him to buy things for her.

• Burton Burleigh: The assistant district attorney in Lycurgus, Burleigh tampers

with evidence in Clyde's case to ensure that he is convicted of first-degree
murder.

(For a detailed list of major and minor characters visit:

http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/An_American_Tragedy_Dreiser/An_American_
Tragedy_Study_Guide02.html)

Social Impact

An American Tragedy takes as point of departure a notorious murder case of 1906

—one among many that Dreiser studied in preparation. He immersed himself in the
social background of the crime to produce a book that is a remarkable work of
reportage, a monumental study of character, and a stunning jeremiad against the
delusions and inequities of American society. (Adapted from:
http://books.google.com.pe/books?
id=bQAOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=an+american+tragedy+socia
l+impact&source=bl&ots=yf_42-Qq1M&sig=KhkYujCgNZLz8swV1WStPMai-
RY&hl=es&ei=W5ftTKDjGISs8Ab46-
iqAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBw#v=one
page&q=an%20american%20tragedy%20social%20impact&f=false)

Few novels have undertaken to track so relentlessly the process by which an

ordinary young man becomes capable of committing a ruthless murder and the
further process by which social and political forces come into play after his arrest. In
Clyde Griffiths, the impoverished, restless offspring of a family of street preachers,
Dreiser created an unforgettable portrait of a man whose social insecurities and
naive dreams of self-betterment conspire to pull him toward act of unforgivable
violence. The murder that he commits on a quiet lake in the Adirondacks is an
extended scene of overwhelming impact, and it is followed by equally gripping
episodes of his arrest and trial. Throughout, Dreiser elevates the most mundane
aspects of what he observes into emotionally charged, often harrowing symbols.

Around Clyde, Dreiser builds an extraordinarily detailed portrait of early twentieth-

century America, its religious and sexual hypocrisies, its economic pressures, its
political corruption and journalistic exploitation. The sheer prophetic amplitude of
his bitter truth-telling, in idiosyncratic prose of uncanny expressiveness, continues
to mark Dreiser as a crucially important American writer. An American Tragedy,
the great achievement of his later years, is a work of mythic force, at once brutal and
heartbreaking.