An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕
Description
Clyde Griffith’s parents are poor street-preachers, but Clyde doesn’t “believe,” and finds their work demeaning. At fifteen he gets a job and starts to ease out of their lives, eventually landing in some trouble that causes him to flee the town where they live. Two years later, Clyde meets his well-off uncle, who owns a large factory in upstate New York. Clyde talks his way into a job at the factory, and soon finds himself supervising a roomful of women. All alone, generally shunned by his uncle’s family, and starved for companionship, he breaks the factory’s rules and begins a relationship with a young woman who works for him. But Clyde has visions of marrying a high-society woman, and fortune smiles on him in the form of the daughter of one of his uncle’s neighbors. Soon Clyde finds himself in a love triangle of his own making, and one from which he seems incapable of extracting himself.
A newspaperman before he became a novelist, Theodore Dreiser collected crime stories for years of young men in relationships with young women of poorer means, where the young men found a richer, prettier girl who would go with him, and often took extreme measures to escape from the first girl. An American Tragedy, based on one of the most infamous of those real-life stories, is a study in lazy ambition, the very real class system in America, and how easy it is to drift into evil. It is populated with poor people who desire nothing more than to be rich, rich people whose only concern is to keep up with their neighbors and not be associated with the “wrong element,” and elements of both who care far more about appearances than reality. It offers further evidence that the world may be very different from 100 years ago, but the people in it are very much the same.
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- Author: Theodore Dreiser
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“No, sir, but it wasn’t quite like that either. You see at that time I was just getting acquainted with Miss X, and I wasn’t telling her anything. She wouldn’t let me. But I knew then, just the same, that I couldn’t care for Miss Alden any more.”
“But what about the claim Miss Alden had on you? Didn’t you feel that that was enough or should be, to prevent you from running after another girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, why did you then?”
“I couldn’t resist her.”
“Miss X, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And so you continued to run after her until you had made her care for you?”
“No, sir, that wasn’t the way at all.”
“Well then, what was the way?”
“I just met her here and there and got crazy about her.”
“I see. But still you didn’t go and tell Miss Alden that you couldn’t care for her any longer?”
“No, sir. Not then.”
“And why not?”
“Because I thought it would hurt her, and I didn’t want to do that.”
“Oh, I see. You didn’t have the moral or mental courage to do it then?”
“I don’t know about the moral or mental courage,” replied Clyde, a little hurt and irritated by this description of himself, “but I felt sorry for her just the same. She used to cry and I didn’t have the heart to tell her anything.”
“I see. Well, let it stand that way, if you want to. But now answer me one other thing. That relationship between you two—what about that—after you knew that you didn’t care for her any more. Did that continue?”
“Well, no, sir, not so very long, anyhow,” replied Clyde, most nervously and shamefacedly. He was thinking of all the people before him now—of his mother—Sondra—of all the people throughout the entire United States—who would read and so know. And on first being shown these questions weeks and weeks before he had wanted to know of Jephson what the use of all that was. And Jephson had replied: “Educational effect. The quicker and harder we can shock ’em with some of the real facts of life around here, the easier it is going to be for you to get a little more sane consideration of what your problem was. But don’t worry your head over that now. When the time comes, just answer ’em and leave the rest to us. We know what we’re doing.” And so now Clyde added:
“You see, after meeting Miss X I couldn’t care for her so much that way any more, and so I tried not to go around her so much any more. But anyhow, it wasn’t so very long after that before she got in trouble and then—well—”
“I see. And when was that—about?”
“Along in the latter part of January last year.”
“And once that happened, then what? Did you or did you not feel that it was your duty under the circumstances to marry her?”
“Well, no—not the way things were then—that is, if I could get her out of it, I mean.”
“And why not? What do you mean by ‘as things were then’?”
“Well, you see, it was just as I told you. I wasn’t caring for her any more, and since I hadn’t promised to marry her, and she knew it, I thought it would be fair enough if I helped her out of it and then told her that I didn’t care for her as I once did.”
“But couldn’t you help her out of it?”
“No, sir. But I tried.”
“You went to that druggist who testified here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To anybody else?”
“Yes, sir—to seven others before I could get anything at all.”
“But what you got didn’t help?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you go to that young haberdasher who testified here as he said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did he give you the name of any particular doctor?”
“Well—yes—but I wouldn’t care to say which one.”
“All right, you needn’t. But did you send Miss Alden to any doctor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she go alone or did you go with her?”
“I went with her—that is, to the door.”
“Why only to the door?”
“Well, we talked it over, and she thought just as I did, that it might be better that way. I didn’t have any too much money at the time. I thought he might be willing to help her for less if she went by herself than if we both went together.”
(“I’ll be damned if he isn’t stealing most of my thunder,” thought Mason to himself at this point. “He’s forestalling most of the things I intended to riddle him with.” And he sat up worried. Burleigh and Redmond and Earl Newcomb—all now saw clearly what Jephson was attempting to do.)
“I see. And it wasn’t by any chance because you were afraid that your uncle or Miss X might hear of it?”
“Oh, yes, I … that is, we both thought of that and talked of it. She understood how things were with me down there.”
“But not about Miss X?”
“No, not about Miss X.”
“And why not?”
“Well, because I didn’t think I could very well tell her just then. It would have made her feel too bad. I wanted to wait until she was all right again.”
“And then tell her and leave her. Is that what you mean?”
“Well, yes, if I still couldn’t care for her any more—yes, sir.”
“But not if she was in trouble?”
“Well, no, sir, not if she was in trouble. But you see, at that time I was expecting to be able to get her out of that.”
“I see. But didn’t her condition affect your attitude toward her—cause you to want to straighten the whole thing out by giving up this Miss X and marrying Miss Alden?”
“Well, no, sir—not then exactly—that is, not at that time.”
“How do you mean—‘not at that time’?”
“Well, I did come to feel that way later, as I told you—but not then—that was afterwards—after we started on our trip to the Adirondacks—”
“And why not then?”
“I’ve said why. I was too crazy about Miss X to think of anything but her.”
“You couldn’t change even then?”
“No, sir. I felt sorry,
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