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A review by brandonpytel
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
5.0
This book has got American classic written all over it. Though a shade under 900 pages, the book sped by, with Dreiser’s prose sweeping us through the narrative.
But what stands out most is the twists and turns of how we feel about Clyde. There’s sympathy, empathy, hope, and anxiety all woven throughout our perception of him. In so many ways we feel for his upbringing, his inability to break out of the life he was born into.
“Who was he anyway?” thinks Clyde “And what did he really amount to? What could he hoped for from such a great world as this really, once they knew why he had troubled to come here?”
So much of the book is about how Clyde tries to compensate for his lack of education through ambition and hard work and how society views him — “looked down upon him and his brother and sisters for being the children of such parents” — but he is still limited by the class system that exists in the industrial 20th century America.
To make matters worse, just around the corner of every chapter is a hint of a future, everything he’s ever wanted, awash with American grandeur, first taking the image of the finest hotel in Kansas City, then the image of Sondra, a glamorous image of high society in New York. But in both cases, the dark sides of these images make themselves clear, as they remain always just out of reach.
Clyde does so much to compensate for his background without being too forceful, reluctantly leveraging his connection with his uncle’s collar business in upstate New York to secure a lowly position in the factory. Though this position forces him again to confront his place in society.
“All their talk was of houses being built, horses they were riding, friends they had met, places they were going to, things they were going to do… while he was shunted away in a small third-floor room… with no place to go. And only fifteen dollars a week to live on.”
Though Clyde spirals into a depth of despair that drives him to contemplate then ultimately commit murder, the events leading up to such an act make him a sympathetic figure that just can’t seem to catch a break. And all of it, still, perhaps attainable with the right approach, Clyde tells himself: “Hard work — conservatism — saving one’s money — looking neat and gentlemanly.”
Any adolescent boy would understand the way Hortense plays Clyde, using him so blatantly that he spends all the little money he has on her. That background of heartbreak and hard breaks makes his time in upstate New York so much more interesting — that this is the first taste of success he’s had, of women taking an interest in him, combined with society’s expectations of roles and his inexperience.
Clyde eventually is overcome by his own juvenile feelings, that of temptation, of flying in the face of what society expects of him, of ditching his own class for the appeal and luxury of that above him, of holding onto the American Dream, squeezing the literal life out of it, so that he can climb higher. But soon realizing that dream is darker than he had ever imagined, one that slowly consumes him to the point of violence.
Clyde accidentally enters a love triangle when he meets Sondra, the ideal of American beauty, but had already “fallen for” Roberta. He then has two visions of his future: One with Roberta, a factory worker whom he thought was everything he wanted, and one with Sondra, who represented wealth, class, and a way out of his miserable upbringing.
When Roberta becomes pregnant, Clyde’s entire future is thrown off balance, and seeing his life with Sondra slip away, he plots the murder that defines the book. But it’s the steps that lead up to this plotting that are so captivating — the ensnaring evil of it, but also the steps he takes to come to such a desperate conclusion.
Despite his flaws, we want Clyde to succeed. Not in murder, but in life. Having invested 500 pages into such a life — with all its typical American successes and misfortunes, adolescent love and lustful follies, the ultimate dream to rise to the top — one cannot help but relate to him at multiple layers, and that's what makes the book so unsettling, a chilling thought that one can’t shake until midway through the final act, as the courtroom drama takes us through every step of the cold-blooded violence.
An American Tragedy is an everyman story of the dark underbelly of the American Dream and the systems that prevent its realization. It’s a misdirected and desperate attempt to succeed at all costs to obtain “ease and luxury, for beauty, for love — his particular kind of love that went with show, pleasure, wealth, position, his eager and immutable aspirations and desires” but ends in “sin — evil, selfishness” for anyone who sees it.
The novel is an attempt to escape — his family, his upbringing, his lot in life, Roberta and his responsibilities, the law, and ultimately prison and death itself — a trivial attempt to escape for peace and happiness rooted in a broken ideal so unreachable that Clyde must resort to violence, ending where he starts: a tortured, lonely prisoner of his own country and all that it represents.
But what stands out most is the twists and turns of how we feel about Clyde. There’s sympathy, empathy, hope, and anxiety all woven throughout our perception of him. In so many ways we feel for his upbringing, his inability to break out of the life he was born into.
“Who was he anyway?” thinks Clyde “And what did he really amount to? What could he hoped for from such a great world as this really, once they knew why he had troubled to come here?”
So much of the book is about how Clyde tries to compensate for his lack of education through ambition and hard work and how society views him — “looked down upon him and his brother and sisters for being the children of such parents” — but he is still limited by the class system that exists in the industrial 20th century America.
To make matters worse, just around the corner of every chapter is a hint of a future, everything he’s ever wanted, awash with American grandeur, first taking the image of the finest hotel in Kansas City, then the image of Sondra, a glamorous image of high society in New York. But in both cases, the dark sides of these images make themselves clear, as they remain always just out of reach.
Clyde does so much to compensate for his background without being too forceful, reluctantly leveraging his connection with his uncle’s collar business in upstate New York to secure a lowly position in the factory. Though this position forces him again to confront his place in society.
“All their talk was of houses being built, horses they were riding, friends they had met, places they were going to, things they were going to do… while he was shunted away in a small third-floor room… with no place to go. And only fifteen dollars a week to live on.”
Though Clyde spirals into a depth of despair that drives him to contemplate then ultimately commit murder, the events leading up to such an act make him a sympathetic figure that just can’t seem to catch a break. And all of it, still, perhaps attainable with the right approach, Clyde tells himself: “Hard work — conservatism — saving one’s money — looking neat and gentlemanly.”
Any adolescent boy would understand the way Hortense plays Clyde, using him so blatantly that he spends all the little money he has on her. That background of heartbreak and hard breaks makes his time in upstate New York so much more interesting — that this is the first taste of success he’s had, of women taking an interest in him, combined with society’s expectations of roles and his inexperience.
Clyde eventually is overcome by his own juvenile feelings, that of temptation, of flying in the face of what society expects of him, of ditching his own class for the appeal and luxury of that above him, of holding onto the American Dream, squeezing the literal life out of it, so that he can climb higher. But soon realizing that dream is darker than he had ever imagined, one that slowly consumes him to the point of violence.
Clyde accidentally enters a love triangle when he meets Sondra, the ideal of American beauty, but had already “fallen for” Roberta. He then has two visions of his future: One with Roberta, a factory worker whom he thought was everything he wanted, and one with Sondra, who represented wealth, class, and a way out of his miserable upbringing.
When Roberta becomes pregnant, Clyde’s entire future is thrown off balance, and seeing his life with Sondra slip away, he plots the murder that defines the book. But it’s the steps that lead up to this plotting that are so captivating — the ensnaring evil of it, but also the steps he takes to come to such a desperate conclusion.
Despite his flaws, we want Clyde to succeed. Not in murder, but in life. Having invested 500 pages into such a life — with all its typical American successes and misfortunes, adolescent love and lustful follies, the ultimate dream to rise to the top — one cannot help but relate to him at multiple layers, and that's what makes the book so unsettling, a chilling thought that one can’t shake until midway through the final act, as the courtroom drama takes us through every step of the cold-blooded violence.
An American Tragedy is an everyman story of the dark underbelly of the American Dream and the systems that prevent its realization. It’s a misdirected and desperate attempt to succeed at all costs to obtain “ease and luxury, for beauty, for love — his particular kind of love that went with show, pleasure, wealth, position, his eager and immutable aspirations and desires” but ends in “sin — evil, selfishness” for anyone who sees it.
The novel is an attempt to escape — his family, his upbringing, his lot in life, Roberta and his responsibilities, the law, and ultimately prison and death itself — a trivial attempt to escape for peace and happiness rooted in a broken ideal so unreachable that Clyde must resort to violence, ending where he starts: a tortured, lonely prisoner of his own country and all that it represents.