"sister Carrie" Eternal And Non-eternal Interpretation

Set in the late 19th-century Chicago, Sister Carrie authentically presents the American society of the time. The novel provides a panoramic view of the real life of the underprivileged people underneath the glamorous abundance of the life of the upper class in the fast-developing Chicago, a prospering industrial metropolitan. Through the description of the social situation of that period and the psychology and behavior of the main characters of the novel, Theodore Dreiser makes an attempt to air the view that many things have the property of being both permanent and impermanent, which are antagonistic and unified. Therefore, by approaching the novel from the perspective of Freud's psychoanalytic theory and focusing on the social environment and the characters'inner world, this thesis makes a thorough analysis of such themes as permanency and impermanency, in an attempt of revealing the truth behind the social phenomena as well as the development and change in the characters'inner world.