American dream

2.2 The collapse of the American Dream in "An American Tragedy"
The theme of the "American dream" was transformed into the theme of the "American tragedy". An American Tragedy is the title of Theodore Dreiser's most famous novel. Dreiser called a book of his articles published in the 1930s "Tragic America".
In fiction, authors often use realities to create local, national, and historical color. The novel "An American Tragedy" describes the life of the American people at the beginning of the 20th century, and with the help of realities, Dreiser displays the spirit of the era. The author managed to realistically demonstrate class antagonism and the negative aspects of the ostentatious well-being of the United States.
Dreiser's novel is based on the story of the murder in 1906 by Chester Gillett of his beloved Grace Brown. The process in this case was widely publicized at the time, and the novel "An American Tragedy" used documents published in newspapers of that time.
An American Tragedy stands out among Dreiser's novels for its depth and comprehensive coverage of the phenomenon of American life. Dreiser believed that American reality, with seeming prosperity, is tragic and terrible, in his opinion, the task of realistic writers is to describe all aspects of American life: not only sports, Hollywood life, the creation of trusts and corporations, the emergence of new cars, but also the negative aspects of American life.
The main problem of the whole work is the conflict between the soul of Clyde, brought up in difficult conditions of poverty and strict religiosity, and the American rich society, in which people like him do not belong. The conflict is in Clyde's spiritual outburst and his rejection by the rich world, in his desire to live a happy life and end it in the electric chair.
Dreiser emphasized the social nature of the novel: “It was an exceptionally true story about that. what life does to the personality and how the personality is powerless against it”
Like many other representatives of the younger generation of America at the beginning of the twentieth century, Clyde chooses the path that, in his opinion, will ultimately lead to an improvement in his financial situation, as well as his social position in society. However, at the same time, he remains indifferent to the financial situation of his loved ones, all he thinks about is the pleasures that he can buy for the money he has earned. “Most of all, Clyde is concerned with the idea of how to keep for himself the lion's share of the money that he earned. From the time he first began working, it had been such a routine that Clyde had to invest most of his earnings - at least three-quarters - into the common household. However, he had been tormented for too long by the desire to look as good as any smart and well-dressed youth, and now that a happy opportunity presented itself, he could not resist the temptation to first of all dress well - and quickly.
Clyde is afraid that his mother will be waiting for financial assistance from him, even when it comes to money for his older sister Estha, who was in a very difficult situation. “And yet he could not suppress his involuntary annoyance. So recently he began to earn decently - and now the mother demands even more and more. Already ten dollars a week! There is always something wrong with them, thought Clyde, they always need something, and there is no guarantee that there will not be new demands later. Clyde always finds an excuse for his thoughts, although he often feels remorse for this. But he is helped to get rid of them by the dream that he will soon be able to achieve on his own what he could not dream of before. Especially in him this desire is warmed up by the world of wealth that surrounds him. First it was the Green Davidson Hotel in Kansas City, where Clyde began working as a messenger, and then the high society environment he found in Lycurgus.
The final completeness of the theme of the "American dream" - the myth of America as the promised land, where any shoe shiner can become a millionaire - was received precisely in the novel "An American Tragedy". The dream turned into an illusion, true humanity turned out to be incompatible with bourgeois standards of happiness.
The theme of American illusions is fully conveyed in the images of Clyde's parents. It is in their house that two dozen sayings and texts stigmatizing vices hang on the wall. Upon learning of Clyde's misdeed in Kansas City, his mother conjures him to remember the aphorism: “Wine is a deceiver; to drink is to fall into madness; whoever succumbs to deceit is not wise,” he asks not to succumb to the devil’s temptation. However, dreams destroy Clyde, destroy the human personality, but the meaning of the novel was wider - American society is responsible for the dissemination and maintenance of these destructive illusions.
For Dreiser, the issue of Clyde's responsibility and guilt is extremely important. The jury, which found Clyde guilty, did not even think about what exactly made him a murderer. Before the elections, the judge needed a high-profile trial so much, where he could show off in front of the voters. That is why prosecutor Mason betrayed him sensationalism, played on the emotions of the crowd, read the intimate letters of the deceased, forgetting about her good name and professional honor. The mystery of the court, at the whim of which a criminal can be both acquitted and convicted, the accidental death sentence of Clyde - these are the questions, answering which, Dreiser writes a socio-psychological chronicle of a typical American crime.
America, having deceived the hero of the novel, sends him to the electric chair, although he acted according to the formula for success. The path from the American Dream to the American Tragedy, explored by Dreiser, is the main artistic discovery of the writer's entire work. Documentary history of Clyde is confirmed by dozens of similar cases taken by Dreiser from newspapers and court chronicles. They ensure the moral reliability of the writer's investigation, give him the right to reckless criticism of the state foundations of America, all its institutions - from the family to the court.
In his novel, Dreiser showed the tragedy of the "American dream", the impossibility of its implementation by moral means. Against the backdrop of literature preaching pragmatic values, the philosophy of success, and militant individualism, Dreiser was the first to question the possibility of realizing those social and moral ideals of success and prosperity that make up the content of the bourgeois "American dream".
Theodore Dreiser (August 27, 1871 - December 28, 1945) was an American writer. Born in the small town of Terr, Indiana, in a family of German immigrants. Father, John Paul Dreiser, a zealous Catholic, hardworking and honest man, belonged to the breed of losers. The family endured severe poverty, in search of a better life they moved from place to place, from one community to another. Theodore was the last, twelfth child. Mother, Sarah Dreiser, an illiterate woman, but wise and kind-hearted, a strong and selfless nature, tried her best to brighten up the life of the family, but Dreiser's childhood memories are bleak. Studying at the parochial school for the shy, slow-witted person he was at that time was a real torment. Peers shunned the lanky, clumsy teenager, often beating him. He began to earn a living early: he was a paperboy, delivered laundry, collected rent, worked for a hardware merchant and peddled himself, worked as an auxiliary worker on the railroad, and washed dishes in one of the restaurants in Chicago. Here he passes his "universities". At a real university in Bloomington, Indiana, he had only a year to attend, thanks to the participation of a schoolteacher who, with her meager means, paid for his education. Here he discovered Tolstoy and first thought about writing.
In early 1892, he managed to get a job as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Here his first notes about the wrong side of city life appear: about slums, unemployed vagrants, rooming houses, saloons, brothels. Cities and editions are changing: St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York. The range of topics is expanding, he successfully masters the craft of a newspaperman. Dreiser's views make him related to writers of an objective, or naturalistic direction. The opinion that Dreiser is the "second Zola" is wrong. Balzac was his idol. He taught him to feel the pulse of the big city. He learned from him to guess the historical meaning of minor events, and those changes that took place in the life of American cities literally before our eyes, and this gave ordinary stories weight and scale. But the main thing he owes to Balzac is the discovery of the dominant character of a young man who is not on the threshold of life, challenging it, obsessed with the dream of success.
Convinced that Americans' interest in life is connected with the impatient expectation of success, Dreiser decides to investigate the psychology of the deprived and ambitious "soldier of fortune" and the object of his ambitious aspirations - American society. The first step on this path was the novel "Sister Carrie", which was met with hostility and immediately banned for "immorality". In 1911, his second novel, which he started ten years ago, Jenny Gerhard, was published. The plot of his first two novels is based on real facts from the life of his sisters. After the release of the novel, Dreiser sets to work on a large-scale business novel. In the course of work, the idea grew, and the idea of a trilogy arose. In 1912, her first part, "The Financier", appeared in 1914. the second came out - "Titan", over the final novel "Stoic" Dreiser worked until his last breath. By opening America to the Americans, Dreiser was also opening himself. All his novels are connected in one way or another with his personal experience, his searches and hobbies. At the turn of the 10-20s, Dreiser seems to be summing up the preliminary results, collecting previously written plays, stories, essays, supplementing them with new ones, and publishing several collections, including Twelve Men, Colors of the Big City. Gradually, the idea of a new novel matures, which will become his triumph. An American Tragedy (1925) was born, like the once Stendhal novel Red and Black, from several lines of a criminal chronicle. At the beginning of the century, American newspapers wrote about the murder of a pregnant lover by a certain Gillette, who turned out to be an obstacle to his path to a profitable marriage. The killer was executed. "Sensations" of this kind appeared in the press from time to time. Dreiser himself, while working as a reporter in St. Louis, described a similar story. Since then, he began to collect newspaper clippings on this subject. He twice began to develop this plot. Dreiser did not hide the similarity of the story of his hero Clyde Griffiths with the story of Gillette.
Clyde Griffiths, a young man from a poor large family of street preachers, not alien to vanity, pride, but devoid of education, practical intelligence, energy, having gained some - very dubious - life experience while working in a Kansas City hotel, ends up in Lycurgus, where he receives a position in the factory of wealthy relatives. Here he meets and becomes close to the worker Roberta Alden, a sweet, modest girl. Soon he has the opportunity to enter the world of the masters of Lycurgus. The daughter of one of the rich, Sondra Finchley, is more than disposed towards Clyde. Meanwhile, it turns out that Roberta is expecting a baby. Clyde has an intention to get rid of her, he thinks over a plan of murder and invites Roberta on a boat trip, during which she dies. Clyde did not have the heart to kill her, chance helped. The blame for the death of the girl is laid on him, and he ends his life in the electric chair, such is the end of a man who believed in the myth of "equal opportunities": this is how Soviet literary critics interpreted Dreiser's novel. This is the plot of the novel. In fact, the point is not entirely in the capitalist world that corrupts the young man, the point, apparently, is that in his soul there were not enough serious moral principles that should have prevented him from killing. It is necessary to look for reasons not only in bourgeois ideals and morality, which "spoiled" the sweet and moral Griffiths. The whole path of his moral decline and depravity shows how logically and gradually he went to murder. Already in prison, Clyde himself cannot understand: "For what?" He is completely confused: did he kill Roberta? After all, he was passionately in love with her and even believed at first, until Sondra's wealth blinded him, that he and Roberta were suitable for each other. True, he never intended to marry a simple worker, and when this became inevitable, he tried to get rid of his youthful "mistake". He accidentally pushed the girl, from an awkward movement the boat turned over, Roberta did not know how to swim at all - and immediately went to the bottom. Clyde was an excellent swimmer, but did not save her, but headed for the shore. Before his eyes stood the face of a drowning woman, crying for help... And he swam towards his dream, towards the "sweet life", the entertainment of the "golden youth", into whose circle Sondra introduced him. No, he didn't kill. Just did not save and did not help. The image of Clyde is created by scrupulous building up of details, small details that, when layered, create the image of a young man, tempted by life from an early age, directing timid but greedy eyes over the "high walls" separating the desired, but such an inaccessible world of rich people. The unusualness of the novel is that the role of the tragic hero went not to Cowperwood, not to Eugene Vittle, but to an ordinary person. He is ashamed of his parents, because they are "white crows", and he wants to be like everyone else. He does not set himself ambitious goals. There is nothing extraordinary in his desire to break out to the top. It is significant that Roberta is driven by the same dream. She gives herself to Clyde, for marriage to him may be her lucky chance. They are both victims of the desire for success, which embraces thousands of their compatriots. Dreiser emphasized the social nature of the novel: "It was an exceptionally true story about what life does to the individual and how the individual is powerless against it." "American Tragedy" for all its scale, diversity, multi-figures is a very solid book, subject to a single powerful rhythm. The impression of power comes not from the figure of the hero, but from the logic of the development of his fate, whose name is Inevitability. Dreiser's artistic vision allowed him to discern the tragedy of fate in an ordinary criminal case. Her tragic predestination is at first vague, but slowly clears up, becoming more and more distinct, and this brings dramatic tension to the novel. The logic of character, coupled with the logic of circumstances, drives Clyde into a trap. For Dreiser, the issue of responsibility and guilt of Clyde is extremely important, the third, last part of the novel is devoted to the trial, the jury, which found Clyde guilty, did not even think about what exactly made him a murderer (albeit in his thoughts, but he was). Before the elections, the judge so needed a high-profile trial where he could show off in front of the voters. That is why Judge Mason gave it sensationalism, played on the emotions of the crowd, read the intimate letters of the deceased, forgetting about her good name and professional honor. The mystery of the court, at the whim of which a criminal can be both acquitted and convicted, the accidental death sentence of Clyde - these are the questions, answering which Dreiser writes a socio-psychological chronicle of a typical American crime. The darkest pages of the novel are devoted to the description of the "House of Death", where Clyde ends up awaiting execution. But S. Eisenstein, to whom Dreiser offered to write the script, immediately determined that the crime that Griffiths is committing is "the total result of those social relations to which he is exposed at every stage of his unfolding biography and character ...".
Eisenstein, as a great artist, caught in the novel what was revealed to a few - "the game of fate." The defenselessness of a person in his face gives rise to the pathos of compassion, which makes the author of the American novel about crime and punishment related to Dostoevsky. If in ancient tragedy fate was presented as ignorance, then in "American Tragedy" it appears in the form of a social system. Dreiser believed that the romance of profit is strong in society, the belief that the existing system is the best prevails, Hollywood holds a stranglehold not only on cinematography, but also on literature; in American literature, no one ever works, there is no poverty, and difficulties are resolved with the help of various intrigues. A number of major magazines ("Success", "American Magazine", "Saturday Mail") glorify the American way of life, private enterprise, "America - a country of equal opportunities for all", the best American state system in the world. Dreiser creates novel after novel, portraying the "gray everyday life" of American reality, exposing the myth of America as a country of "limitless opportunities" ("Sister Kerry" is the path of a simple American girl to success, emphasizing the accidental success of the heroine who got out of the bottom of the life of factory workers) . In the "Trilogy of Desires" ("The Financier" (1912), "Titan" (1913), "Genius" (1915)) the author shows the fate of the entire nation, which was under the heel of monopolies at the end of the 19th century, using the career of the protagonist Cowperwood as an example. Dreiser's creative path is characterized at the beginning of the century by the growing protest against the barbaric cruelty of capitalist society, from which he sees no way out. Dreiser believed that American reality, with apparent external well-being, is tragic and terrible, in his opinion, the task of realistic writers is to describe all aspects of American life: not only sports, Hollywood life, the creation of trusts and corporations, the emergence of new cars, but also "hell and purgatory "American life. The final completeness of the theme of the American dream - the myth of America as the promised land, where any shoe shiner can become a millionaire - received in the novel "An American Tragedy" (1925). The dream turned into an illusion, true humanity turned out to be incompatible with bourgeois standards of happiness. America, having deceived the hero of the novel, sends him to the electric chair, although he has consistently fulfilled the official formula for success. The path from the American Dream to the American Tragedy, explored by Dreiser, is the main artistic discovery of the entire work of the writer. The documentary nature of the story of Clyde is confirmed by a dozen similar cases taken by Dreiser from newspapers and court chronicles. They also ensure the moral reliability of the writer's investigation, give him the right to reckless criticism of the state foundations of America, all its institutions - from the family to the court. The novel "An American Tragedy" became one of the peaks of Dreiser's realism: the deep psychologism of the novel is closely connected with social analysis, the writer shows the formation of a person's spiritual image under the influence of the environment.