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—not much—not any, really.”
“Well, then, supposing some doctor to whom Miss Alden had applied had been willing to assist her and wanted—say a hundred dollars or so—were you ready to furnish that?”
“No, sir—not right off, that is.”
“Did she have any money of her own that you know of?”
“None that I know of—no, sir.”
“Well, how did you intend to help her then?”
“Well, I thought if either she or I found anyone and he would wait and let me pay for it on time, that I could save and pay it that way, maybe.”
“I see. You were perfectly willing to do that, were you?”
“Yes, sir, I was.”
“You told her so, did you?”
“Yes, sir. She knew that.”
“Well, when neither you nor she could find anyone to help her, then what? What did you do next?”
“Well, then she wanted me to marry her.”
“Right away?”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I told her I just couldn’t then. I didn’t have any money to get married on. And besides if I did and didn’t go away somewhere, at least until the baby was born, everybody would find out and I couldn’t have stayed there anyhow. And she couldn’t either.”
“And why not?”
“Well, there were my relatives. They wouldn’t have wanted to keep me any more, or her either, I guess.”
“I see. They wouldn’t have considered you fit for the work you were doing, or her either. Is that it?”
“I thought so, anyhow,” replied Clyde.
“And then what?”
“Well, even if I had wanted to go away with her and marry her, I didn’t have enough money to do that and she didn’t either. I would have had to give up my place and gone and found another somewhere before I could let her come. Besides that, I didn’t know any place where I could go and earn as much as I did there.”
“How about hotel work? Couldn’t you have gone back to that?”
“Well, maybe—if I had an introduction of some kind. But I didn’t want to go back to that.”
“And why not?”
“Well, I didn’t like it so much any more—not that kind of life.”
“But you didn’t mean that you didn’t want to do anything at all, did you? That wasn’t your attitude, was it?”
“Oh, no, sir. That wasn’t it. I told her right away if she would go away for a while—while she had her baby—and let me stay on there in Lycurgus, that I would try to live on less and give her all I could save until she was all right again.”
“But not marry her?”
“No, sir, I didn’t feel that I could do that then.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She wouldn’t do it. She said she couldn’t and wouldn’t go through with it unless I would marry her.”
“I see. Then and there?”
“Well, yes—pretty soon, anyhow. She was willing to wait a little while, but she wouldn’t go away unless I would marry her.”
“And did you tell her that you didn’t care for her any more?”
“Well, nearly—yes, sir.”
“What do you mean by ‘nearly’?”
“Well, that I didn’t want to. Besides, she knew I didn’t care for her any more. She said so herself.”
“To you, at that time?”
“Yes, sir. Lots of times.”
“Well, yes, that’s true—it was in all of those letters of hers that were read here. But when she refused so flatly, what did you do then?”
“Well, I didn’t know what to do. But I thought maybe if I could get her to go up to her home for a while, while I tried and saved what I could—well … maybe … once she was up there and saw how much I didn’t want to marry her—” (Clyde paused and fumbled at his lips. This lying was hard.)
“Yes, go on. And remember, the truth, however ashamed of it you may be, is better than any lie.”
“And maybe when she was a little more frightened and not so determined—”
“Weren’t you frightened, too?”
“Yes, sir, I was.”
“Well, go on.”
“That then—well—maybe if I offered her all that I had been able to save up to then—you see I thought maybe I might be able to borrow some from someone too—that she might be willing to go away and not make me marry her—just live somewhere and let me help her.”
“I see. But she wouldn’t agree to that?”
“Well, no—not to my not marrying her, no—but to going up there for a month, yes. I couldn’t get her to say that she would let me off.”
“But did you at that or any other time before or subsequent to that say that you would come up there and marry her?”
“No, sir. I never did.”
“Just what did you say then?”
“I said that … as soon as I could get the money,” stuttered Clyde at this point, so nervous and shamed was he, “I would come for her in about a month and we could go away somewhere until—until—well, until she was out of that.”
“But you did not tell her that you would marry her?”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“But she wanted you to, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had you any notion that she could force you so to do at that time—marry her against your will, I mean?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. Not if I could help it. My plan was to wait as long as I could and save all the money I could and then when the time came just refuse and give her all the money that I had and help her all I could from then on.”
“But you know,” proceeded Jephson, most suavely and diplomatically at this point, “there are various references in these letters here which Miss Alden wrote you”—and he reached over and from the district attorney’s table picked up the original letters of Roberta and weighed them solemnly in his hand—“to a plan which you two had in connection with this trip—or at least that she seemed to think you had. Now, exactly what was
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