“Sister Carrie”

Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
(1871-1945)
• American writer
• In 1889-1890. studied at the
University of Bloomington.
• He began his literary career in 1892
as a reporter for the Chicago Daily
Globe
• In 1897, his first stories and essays
appeared in magazines.
Main works
Historical
background

• The author wrote this novel when

he was 29 years old

• Dreiser’s first novel was an open

challenge to those mores that the
writer himself called “the iron grip
of traditions and conventions”
What did the writer center his
attention upon?

• From a young age he had a

difficult life, he experienced
hunger, need, deprivation

• He wanted to show the real picture

of what is happening to the
simplest people in America
Main protagonists

Charles H. Drouet Caroline 'Carrie' Meeber George W. Hurstwood

• Idea – the fragility of
American stability

• Setting – Chicago

• Time – late nineteenth

century
 Why is the book still
popular?

It continues to carry a powerful message about

the strengths and weaknesses of the United
States
What makes the novel
realistic?

• Realism is all about portraying real life

• In realism novel, the characters usually

represented to have a phycological problem
and it will dig their motivations, emotions,
and actions.
Film version
 Stylistic devices
• Carrie rushes into a “great sea of life”
• she feels “alone, a lone figure in a tossing thoughtless sea”
• “dogs and all men”
• “The sparrow upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray
horse tugging his weary load, feel the long, keen breaths of
winter”
• “He never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for
himself. He troubled himself not at all about Drouet’s priority.
He was merely floating those gossamer threads of thought
which, like the spider’s, he hoped would lay hold somewhere.
He did not know, he could not guess, what the result would be”