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Theodore Herman Dreiser was born in the state of Indiana in an immigrant family of a weaver; from his early age he knew poverty. He managed to attend Indiana University for a year but then he
had to supplement this lack of education by reading. He had to do many off jobs. In 1892 he began to work
as a newspaper reporter. In 1897 he abandoned journalism for literary work. He wrote a great number of
publicist works throughout all his life. All his novels deal with the notion of the American Dream, which as
popular through propaganda & the works of some second rate but very prolific, prosperous & quite popular
writers. Dreiser showed the other side of the so called "from rags to riches" or "a-poor-boy-gels-rich" myth.
At thst time there was a writer in the USA Horatio Alger (a teacher at a boys' school) who wrote 130 novels all telling of a successful career of a poor boy who gets rich, acquires wealth & position owing to
his wit, or a successful marriage, or something else, Dreiser's novels showed the reverse side of this
American Dream - he tried to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the very system in the USA makes a person sacrifice his humanity for the sake of achieving this Dream of Success. And this money worship is
usually accompanied by moral fall & degradation (this problem was already touched upon in his first novel,
mentioned below, and actually that is why the American public was not ready to recognize this book at once - the story criticized the very fundamental ideal of American life ).
Dreiser was greatly influenced by Spenser's ideas about social Darwinism & on this basis he tried to develop his own theory of individual & social determinism. Being a naturalist (remember the concept of naturalism - "human life is very much alike animal life, he survives who is the fittest"), Dreiser avoided passing a moral judgment on his protagonists. Because of his first novel was not welcome in the USA, and for a while was even banned. In this book book "Sister Carrie" (1900) - he does not censure his heroine, who in the eyes of the public is a fallen woman, who has made her career by immoral means, i.e. By exploiting men, and earned her living in this way. First this book got popularity in Great Britain & only after that became widely known in the USA.
His other famous works are the following ones: — "Jennie Gerhardt" (1927) - a story about a poor girl who preserves her moral chastity but is unhappy in her family life; a trilogies - "The Financier” (1912), “The Titan”; “The Stoic” (published in 1947, after the death of the author) – this trilogy is a thorough study of the life of a self-made man - Frank Calperwood, who succeeds in life at the expense of moral sacrifices. Much of his talent & time was spent on ephemeral values, so that he had suffered moral losses on his way to material success. It is a story of the rise of a mightiest American family. F. Cowperwood is a typical man of the American transition from capitalism to imperialism.
Dreiser's masterpiece is the novel "An American Tragedy" (1925) which like his other hooks was based on true to life stories. A case of murdering a beloved by her boyfriend was quite a common case at that time. So, Dreiser got interested in the problem. The novel consists of 3 parts:
—the 1st part - "Bildungsroman" - from the German verb "bilden" -"to bring up") which shows the life of Clyde Griffiths, that brought him to committing the crime;
— the 2nd part the crime itself - it can becalled partially a detective story;
— the 3rd part the court trial & Clyde Griffiths' slay in the death house & his thoughts about the crime, his repentance. "An American Tragedy" can be called a psychological novel. It exposes the reasons for the protagonist's nagic fate. Dreiser tried to refrain from passing any moral judgments. He just traces the states of Clyde's moral form, shows the subjective &. Objective reasons for his criminal act. He neither condemns nor justifies Clyde. Nevertheless he manages to prove that America with its American Dream (the unlimited
possibilities for a young man to succeed) may lead its citizens to commit unlawful & criminal actions.
18. Naturalism in American Literature. J. London.
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