An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy, or Oh My God I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Damn Book

An American Tragedy is the longest slog I have every worked my way through. It is boring and poorly written, but is certainly worthy to stand as the most canonical text of American naturalism. It is a very pure form of naturalism - the essence of naturalism, which has not been reduced and strengthened in power but allowed to flow endlessly and thus blunted in its force.

It is essentially a novel of the American Dream, and how that Dream is thwarted by class. Perhaps moreso, it is a novel about how social strictures, particularly puritan methods of nobility, bring about tragedy.

The tragedy hear is no that Clyde Griffiths kills Roberta Alden. It's that society sets up a situation in which that could occur. Clyde doesn't love Roberta; he has a better life waiting for him. But she's pregnant. Society dictates that single mothers should be ostracized; society dictates that abortions are illegal (unless, as we hear about repeatedly, a wealthy woman of good stock is pregnant, in which case a physician can always be found). Society, then, brings about the tragedy by hypocritically insisting that Clyde must marry Roberta even though doing so would ruin both of their lives.

This determinstic viewpoint is pushed by Jepheson, one of Clyde's two lawyers (the other, Belknap, pushes the hypocrisy: he helps Clyde because he feels bad that, in the same situation, his wealth enabled him to get an abortion). Jephson says "You didn't make yourself" (710). He lays the blame for Clyde's problems outside of Clyde. That's the naturalistic way.

The introducer writes: "As a poor boy in his native Indiana, Dreiser avidly read the Horatio Alger stories and other self-help books about success. Unlike Chester Gillette (the historical precedent for Clyde), however, he had the talent, intellect, and drive to achieve it." (IX)

Drive, drive, drive. Here is Serres' thermodynamics - his engine. Over and over again, we're told that Clyde is handsomer than his cousin Gilbert, but lacks his drive and force. In other words, Gilberts was born with a more powerful reservoir than Clyde; he has a greater energy system to draw upon. This is what ultimately prevents Clyde from succeeding; although he could never be Gilbert, who was born to success, his lack of drive prevented him from rising on his own. Unlike Dreiser, or an Alger Hero, he simply doesn't have the motor for success. And lacking that motor, the classism and religious hypocrisy of his society dooms him.