On City Immigrants' Ethical Choices

Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945)is one of the most outstanding city novelists in20th-century American Literature and is well known around the world for his bold and documentary literary creation.The theme of city remains to be a key factor no matter in his biography or in his fictional novels and is closely related to human beings' desires.The suffering and fate of the protagonists in his city novels have been a great concern worth further investigation from the perspective of ethical literary value.The city immigrants represented by Carrie in Sister Carrie and Clyde in An American Tragedy come from the underprivileged class and arrive in newly-built prosperous cities for the pursuit of their dreams on the background of 19 th century industrious revolution in urgent need of labor forces.In order to live a wealthy and admiring life,they choose a shortcut that goes against the ethical norms and standards and end with tragic fates.This dissertation is to interpret the two protagonists' ethical choices based on three theories – urban space,consumerism and ethical literary criticism extracted respectively from Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space,Jean Baudrillard's The Consumer Society and Nie Zhenzhao's Ethical Literary Criticism,among which the former two theories serve as an interpretation of the ethical environment that the protagonists live in.Besides,the ethical choices made by the two protagonists further reveal Dreiser's ethical tendencies and his contributions to literature.The dissertation involves altogether five parts.Chapter One introduces Dreiser and his literary position and achievements,literature review abroad and at home and the significance and layout of the dissertation.Chapter Two and Chapter Three hold progressive interaction with each other,probing into the urban spaces and urban consumption in the two novels.Chapter Four analyzes the ethical choices made by the two city immigrants.Chapter Five is a conclusion.