Analysis And Exploration Of American Tragedies

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was a great American writer. He exposed and criticizedAmerican society through his works. He painted a panoramic picture of the society in which wereaders are able to see the capitalist nature of class oppression and exploitation. His writingtechnique is of naturalist nature and when he put his pen to the portrayal of social reality thepicture he painted is so vivid and realistic that nobody will doubt the reliability and truthfulnessof what he described. This is closely related with his journalist career. An American Tragedy is one of his representative works. Since its publication it has drawnacclamation and criticism. Enormous books and articles have been published not only inAmerica but in other parts of the world to explore the social significance the novel produces andthe realistic way of presenting the social facts. It serves as a window through which we canobserve at a short distance the nature of the American society at the beginning of the late 19thcentury and early 20th century. The story mainly tells a story about an American young man, Clyde was the son of destitutepreacher. In order to marry a girl of upper-class, and win wealth and position, he plans to murderhis poor pregnant girlfriend, however, his girlfriend is drown by accident and he could haverescued her but does not do anything, finally he is sentenced to electrocution.When we talk about American tragedy as described in the novel we refer to many aspects ofthe social realities. First and for most American tragedy is the tragedy of American dream. Manypeople like Clyde cherish American dream of variety but at last all their dreams are crushed.American democracy is also a tragedy in the novel. Laws are violated for one reason or other.Also American tragedy is a tragedy of morality. Many incidents in the novel show thedegradation of the moral beings of the characters. They have no sympathy and what they pursueis only self-interests. And last American tragedy is the tragedy of love. Many lovers in the novelfind themselves totally deceived and their love affairs destroyed. My thesis will deal with the four aspects of the American tragedy. The whole thesis isdivided into three chapters. The first chapter gives the background against which the novel waswritten. The author based his novel on a real criminal case that happened in American history.Dreiser collected information from the mass media and made a thorough study and analysis ofthe information and drew the most useful episodes and incidents from the newspapers andmagazines. Therefore, his novel is actually a combination of fiction and facts.The second chapter is about the American democratic tragedy. This is the main body of thethesis. It is further divided into four parts. American tragedy will be analyzed from Americandream, democracy, morality and love.The third chapter deals with the root cause of American dream. This is also an important partof the thesis. It tries to explore the reasons why in America people's lives are pervaded with somany tragic events when the whole country had experienced great transformation and changes ineconomy and politics and their lives had been improved considerably.The last part of the thesis is the conclusion. In this part the writer intends to do something tomake an account of the important position of the author and how his novels have so muchprofound significance. Of course the whole thesis has left much to be desired. It intends topromote further discussions about this literary giant and his contribution to American literature.