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bittybren's review against another edition
4.0
3.5/5 Stars
I did enjoy the concept and storyline of this book but holy goodness is it too long lol. This book is based off of an actually crime that took place in something like 1908 so I looked into it more and it was really fascinating.
For the book itself though it followed the story of a young man from childhood to his young death by the electric chair. It was hard for me to sympathize with the main character because he was just so whiney. Then again, I'm born in a different timeframe so maybe that makes and impact.
I did enjoy the concept and storyline of this book but holy goodness is it too long lol. This book is based off of an actually crime that took place in something like 1908 so I looked into it more and it was really fascinating.
For the book itself though it followed the story of a young man from childhood to his young death by the electric chair. It was hard for me to sympathize with the main character because he was just so whiney. Then again, I'm born in a different timeframe so maybe that makes and impact.
melissmax's review against another edition
1.0
If I could give this book less than one star, I would. I really hated this writing style.
swashb's review against another edition
1.0
If you want to read a book that will make you feel depressed then this one is for you.
ed_moore's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
“Clyde was left to cogitate on and make best of a world that at its best was a kind of inferno of mental ills - above which - as above Dante might have been written - “abandon hope-ye who enter here”
Dreiser’s ‘An American Tragedy’ is the tale of Clyde Griffiths, a boy in his pursuit of the promise of the American Dream working his way up in the capitalist society of 1920s America. With tones of the high life of ‘The Great Gatsby’, the book more so reminded me of the struggle under capitalism presented in Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ as Clyde devotes himself to the industrial world in search of riches and love. The book is split into three sections, and with its length it builds up slowly and as soon as I reached the tension of the first part it ended and the scene changes, immediately killing momentum again. That was one of the main struggles of this tome, it was brilliantly paced in the final 100 pages and really engaging, partly because of a better structuring and partly because of my determination to finish with the end in sight, though the chapters were quite short hence it was very easy to put down during reading sessions resulting in me ploughing through it very slowly.
For a long while, I was waiting for the tragedy. I was tracking Clyde on his rise as a tragic hero and anticipating the fall, and that did come although at this point Clyde as a protagonist was extremely dislikable. He is self-entitled, spoilt and completely unfaithful across his multiple flings with women that make up the motivations of his character and the plot. It was when the tragic fall did come however, myself now rooting for Clyde’s downfall, that I realise the ‘American Tragedy’ is not Clyde’s tragedy, and that realisation was powerful.
Dreiser wrote a certainly memorable novel, with a protagonist that’ll really split opinions and has so many layers to him, but his pacing was off for the most part of the book. In all my past ‘big books’ I have undertaken I have either loved them or really hated them, and for the first time there’s one that slots quite comfortably into the middle of the pack.
greg_brown's review against another edition
3.0
I would have liked this book a lot more if it had been about half the length. I'd recommend watching the movie version instead, A Place in the Sun, which is excellent.
mudder17's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars
This is my first book by Theodore Dreiser and I'm glad I read it. As long as it is, I think the combination of narrator and Dreiser's style worked very well. I found myself yelling more and more at Clyde as the book kept on ramping up, but then during the trial, I started feeling sorry for him and that part of Clyde's inability to see how wrong he was and how at fault he was was because of all the lessons he was learning from society, especially high society. And yet, why did he not learn better lessons from his parents? Part of that is because he felt stifled by their life and he couldn't accept it as a good way to be. He was constantly trying to move up in the societal castes and problems would arrive not because of anything he did but because others were doing it to HIM. There are so many layers to this book and I can see how it would be perfect for a High School English class, except for the sheer length of the book. Although the book starts out slowly, about halfway through the book it starts to move more quickly until, by the end, you're on a runaway train. Looking back, I don't know that I would have wanted to sit down and read and study such a book, but it is definitely worthwhile! The title is completely appropriate and although times are different, I can see how this could still happen (ack!) today. The more things have changed the more they stay the same, huh?
The extra half star is because I think the narrator does such a great job conveying the feeling of the author's words. Especially when Dreiser repeats words and phrases to convey the intensity of the moment--Dan John Miller completely captures this feeling. And the trial had me hanging by the edge of my seat, even though you just knew how it was going to all end; how it HAD to end. This was a story where, by the end, everyone is screaming and there is no way to stop it. Whew! Now I need a breather!
This is my first book by Theodore Dreiser and I'm glad I read it. As long as it is, I think the combination of narrator and Dreiser's style worked very well. I found myself yelling more and more at Clyde as the book kept on ramping up, but then during the trial, I started feeling sorry for him and that part of Clyde's inability to see how wrong he was and how at fault he was was because of all the lessons he was learning from society, especially high society. And yet, why did he not learn better lessons from his parents? Part of that is because he felt stifled by their life and he couldn't accept it as a good way to be. He was constantly trying to move up in the societal castes and problems would arrive not because of anything he did but because others were doing it to HIM. There are so many layers to this book and I can see how it would be perfect for a High School English class, except for the sheer length of the book. Although the book starts out slowly, about halfway through the book it starts to move more quickly until, by the end, you're on a runaway train. Looking back, I don't know that I would have wanted to sit down and read and study such a book, but it is definitely worthwhile! The title is completely appropriate and although times are different, I can see how this could still happen (ack!) today. The more things have changed the more they stay the same, huh?
The extra half star is because I think the narrator does such a great job conveying the feeling of the author's words. Especially when Dreiser repeats words and phrases to convey the intensity of the moment--Dan John Miller completely captures this feeling. And the trial had me hanging by the edge of my seat, even though you just knew how it was going to all end; how it HAD to end. This was a story where, by the end, everyone is screaming and there is no way to stop it. Whew! Now I need a breather!
jasondangelo's review against another edition
3.0
Oh how different are the writing styles of Forster and Dreiser (and Woolf too for that matter, but that will be saved for another blog). Some will prefer Dreiser to Forster, but I belong to the other camp, preferring Forster's direct, poetic, and insightful prose to Dreisers cumbersome and unedited prose.
Both these stories, Passage to India and An American Tragedy, do not end where I expect them do. I expect Passage to end shortly after the trial and Tragedy to end shortly after Clyde is caught. The dramatic impulse does not dictate that we follow Clyde all the way to the moment of his execution, but it is important to Dreiser to take us there. It was Forster's determination to include the entire final section that led Ann to draw her brilliant reading about what is actually at the heart of Forster's novel, the friendship of Aziz and Fielding. Here the American tragedy is not simply Roberta's murder. The novel is about two murders: Roberta's and Clyde's, and for Dreiser, Clyde's murder seems every bit as tragic and pointless as Roberta's.
The thing that strikes me about the third book of the novel is Clyde's inability to feel fully guilty for murdering Roberta. He's not a sociopath insofar as he knows that what he did was not good, I believe. There's much made, as Ann notes, about whether or not Clyde actually killed Roberta or if in the end it was an accident, but again I agree with Ann and that Clyde is clearly responsible for Roberta's death. So why does Clyde want to split hairs here, and to the point that he cannot make any such confession of his guilt even to McMillan and God? Because, I propose, for Clyde, his actions were not wrong. The personal beliefs born in Clyde is that the search of material goods and ease are a reasonable and necessary quest. Roberta was going to ruin that irreparably. What is immoral then? Getting rid of an obstacle to pursue what he must pursue or accepting defeat and living a miserable life. Clyde does not deal with a moral vs. immoral decision, but with two moral decisions.
This books seems to me to be a response to Horatio Alger novels, in which our plucky young hero rises up from obscurity due to hard work and moral righteousness. Clyde never stands a chance to truly rise. He makes a million bad decisions and suffers from them, but if he were born privileged like Gilbert or Belknap, his decisions would have been in no way disastrous. Belknap faced the same problem, but his rich father bailed him out. If Gilbert reached the same point that Clyde did and got someone pregnant, Dad would be there. Hell, even Dr. Glenn performed abortions for the rich and privileged but not for the poor. And let's say Gilbert murdered Roberta for the same reason Clyde did, the entire legal force of the Griffiths would have been there to aid him.
Please forgive the rambling nature of this post.
If Clyde's murder is a parallel with Roberta's, and if Roberta was murdered because she stood in Clyde's way, then why was Clyde murdered? What was Clyde pregnant with and how did his pregnancy (metaphorically speaking, of course) threaten to derail the social world in which he lived? I think that is the central question of the novel.
How do morality and social progress/personal improvement meet and shape each other? Another central question.
This novel is widely considered a piece of Realism in which environment, not nature determine the course of events and character. Here, Clyde's desires and concerns are innate, not created by culture. So much so that he is constantly searching for understanding, understanding that his mother and society at large cannot have for him. He is something like Frankenstein's monster not knowing why he has been made so monstrous. How can others behave so well? How can they avoid the troubles he does? What Clyde never connects, because no one admits, Clyde's desires are not monstrous, but human, or rather "American." Others have the same problems, but they are either comfortably stuck in their caste or they are privileged enough to avoid the ramifications.
To murder Clyde, society addresses nothing, examines itself and its structure not at all. The deathhouse sequence continually refers to the mechanical nature of things here. Everything is ritualized and automatic and meaningless. The only examination expected is to be made by the prisoners trying to come to peace with the end of their life. Our social structure need examine nothing and can move on, leaving Clyde and his trial to be what it always was: entertainment for the masses, a reality TV show before TV, a Jerry Springer circus of pain and outrage.
And though I feel all that intellectually, I can't say I had much sympathy for Clyde, myself. He was a whiny prick. I have no idea what that says about me.
Both these stories, Passage to India and An American Tragedy, do not end where I expect them do. I expect Passage to end shortly after the trial and Tragedy to end shortly after Clyde is caught. The dramatic impulse does not dictate that we follow Clyde all the way to the moment of his execution, but it is important to Dreiser to take us there. It was Forster's determination to include the entire final section that led Ann to draw her brilliant reading about what is actually at the heart of Forster's novel, the friendship of Aziz and Fielding. Here the American tragedy is not simply Roberta's murder. The novel is about two murders: Roberta's and Clyde's, and for Dreiser, Clyde's murder seems every bit as tragic and pointless as Roberta's.
The thing that strikes me about the third book of the novel is Clyde's inability to feel fully guilty for murdering Roberta. He's not a sociopath insofar as he knows that what he did was not good, I believe. There's much made, as Ann notes, about whether or not Clyde actually killed Roberta or if in the end it was an accident, but again I agree with Ann and that Clyde is clearly responsible for Roberta's death. So why does Clyde want to split hairs here, and to the point that he cannot make any such confession of his guilt even to McMillan and God? Because, I propose, for Clyde, his actions were not wrong. The personal beliefs born in Clyde is that the search of material goods and ease are a reasonable and necessary quest. Roberta was going to ruin that irreparably. What is immoral then? Getting rid of an obstacle to pursue what he must pursue or accepting defeat and living a miserable life. Clyde does not deal with a moral vs. immoral decision, but with two moral decisions.
This books seems to me to be a response to Horatio Alger novels, in which our plucky young hero rises up from obscurity due to hard work and moral righteousness. Clyde never stands a chance to truly rise. He makes a million bad decisions and suffers from them, but if he were born privileged like Gilbert or Belknap, his decisions would have been in no way disastrous. Belknap faced the same problem, but his rich father bailed him out. If Gilbert reached the same point that Clyde did and got someone pregnant, Dad would be there. Hell, even Dr. Glenn performed abortions for the rich and privileged but not for the poor. And let's say Gilbert murdered Roberta for the same reason Clyde did, the entire legal force of the Griffiths would have been there to aid him.
Please forgive the rambling nature of this post.
If Clyde's murder is a parallel with Roberta's, and if Roberta was murdered because she stood in Clyde's way, then why was Clyde murdered? What was Clyde pregnant with and how did his pregnancy (metaphorically speaking, of course) threaten to derail the social world in which he lived? I think that is the central question of the novel.
How do morality and social progress/personal improvement meet and shape each other? Another central question.
This novel is widely considered a piece of Realism in which environment, not nature determine the course of events and character. Here, Clyde's desires and concerns are innate, not created by culture. So much so that he is constantly searching for understanding, understanding that his mother and society at large cannot have for him. He is something like Frankenstein's monster not knowing why he has been made so monstrous. How can others behave so well? How can they avoid the troubles he does? What Clyde never connects, because no one admits, Clyde's desires are not monstrous, but human, or rather "American." Others have the same problems, but they are either comfortably stuck in their caste or they are privileged enough to avoid the ramifications.
To murder Clyde, society addresses nothing, examines itself and its structure not at all. The deathhouse sequence continually refers to the mechanical nature of things here. Everything is ritualized and automatic and meaningless. The only examination expected is to be made by the prisoners trying to come to peace with the end of their life. Our social structure need examine nothing and can move on, leaving Clyde and his trial to be what it always was: entertainment for the masses, a reality TV show before TV, a Jerry Springer circus of pain and outrage.
And though I feel all that intellectually, I can't say I had much sympathy for Clyde, myself. He was a whiny prick. I have no idea what that says about me.
janeasc's review against another edition
4.0
I listened to the unabridged Audible version of this book, so I'll start by saying the narration was outstanding. The book itself seemed to start slowly, but as it progressed the characters filled out and it became an interesting and thought provoking read. It was hard to not make comparisons to the movie in certain parts, but there is so much more here.