An American Tragedy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition book cover of An American Tragedy |
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| Author | Theodore Dreiser |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime |
| Publisher | Boni & Liveright |
| Released | 1925 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 880 (reissue) |
| ISBN | NA & ISBN 0-451-52465-9 (reissue) |
An American Tragedy is an American novel by Theodore Dreiser. Published in 1925, the book is the story of a young man, Clyde Griffiths, whose troubles with women and the law take him from his religious upbringing in Kansas City to the fictional town of Lycurgus, New York. Among Clyde's love interests are the materialistic Hortense Briggs, the charming farmer's daughter Roberta Alden, and the aristocratic Sondra Finchley. The book is naturalistic in style, containing subject matter such as religion, capital punishment and abortion.
An American Tragedy has been adapted into opera, at the hands of composer Tobias Picker. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera starring Nathan Gunn in New York on Dec. 2, 2005. The well-known film A Place in the Sun is also based on An American Tragedy. Dreiser strongly disapproved of a 1931 film version directed by Josef von Sternberg. Sergei Eisenstein prepared a screenplay in the late 1920s.
Many critics and commentators have also compared elements of Woody Allen's 2005 film, Match Point to the central plot of An American Tragedy. Dreiser based the book on the notorious 1906 criminal case, in which Chester Gillette was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, Grace Brown, at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. The murder trial drew international attention when Brown's love letters to Gillette were read in court. Theodore Dreiser saved newspaper clippings about the case for some 15 years before writing his novel. Clyde Griffiths was based on Chester Gillette, right down to the same initials.
[edit] Plot summary
Raised by poor and devoutly-religious parents, who force him to participate in their street missionary work, the ambitious but naïve Clyde is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bell-boy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more sophisticated than he, and they introduce Clyde to the world of alcohol and prostitution. Clyde enjoys his new lifestyle and does everything in his power to win the affections of the flirtatious Hortense Briggs. But Clyde's life is forever changed when a stolen car he is travelling in with friends kills a young child. Clyde flees Kansas City, and after a brief stay in Chicago, he reestablishes himself as a foreman at the collar factory of his wealthy long-lost uncle in Lycurgus, New York, who adopts Clyde after they suddenly meet through a stroke of fortune.
Although Clyde vows not to consort with women in the way that caused his Kansas City downfall, he is swiftly attracted to Roberta Alden, a poor and very innocent farmgirl working under him -- thus breaking the factory rules. While Clyde initially enjoys the secretive relationship and virtually coerces Roberta into sex, his ambition forces him to realize that he could never marry her. He dreams of the elegant Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a wealthy Lycurgus man and a family friend of his uncle's. As developments between him and Sondra begin to look promising, Roberta discovers that she is pregnant.
Having unsuccessfully attempted to procure an abortion for Roberta, who expects him to marry her, Clyde procrastinates while his relationship with Sondra continues to mature. When he realizes that he has a genuine chance to marry Sondra, Clyde hatches a plan to get rid of Roberta in a manner that seems accidental.
When he takes Roberta for a canoe ride on Big Bittern lake in upstate New York, Clyde lacks the nerve to murder her; however, Roberta accidentally falls out of the boat and drowns, Clyde being too cowardly, or hesitant, to save her; the narrative is deliberately unclear. The trail of circumstantial evidence points to murder, and the local authorities are only too eager to convict Clyde. Following a sensational trial before an unsympathetic audience, despite a vigorous defense by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is found guilty and sentenced to death. The jailhouse scenes and the correspondence between Clyde and his mother stand out as exemplars of pathos in modern literature.
[edit] Further reading
- Jude Davies, King Alfred's College. "An American Tragedy." The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 October 2001. The Literary Dictionary Company. Accessed on 29 October 2005.
- An American Tragedy: A Study Guide
- Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy The Library of America. Accessed on October 28, 2005.
- "Double Exposure," an article about differences between the two film versions of An American Tragedy, in Opera News, December 2005, pp. 24–31.
