Money and morality in theodore dreiser’s novel " sister carrie" contents

2.2. Sister Carrie Morality and Ethics
Theodore Dreiser, a leading specialist in the sciences and modern industry in the US, writes about sex and violence in the lower classes to misinterpret the truth about uncertain aspects of urban life. To that end, Sister Kerry tells the story of a beautiful city girl who uses her subtle tricks to sleep from factories and salons in Chicago to the New York scene. Along the way, Kerry, a tavern owner who stole to finance his escape to Chicago, committed suicide leaving it and eventually infiltrated an apartment in Bower. Meanwhile, "Sister Carrie" tells the story of a young man who pursues the American Dream based on a sensational real-life crime and keeps his pregnant ex-girlfriend from interfering with his relationship with a rich woman . . He lowers the boat and surrounds it, but is found guilty of the crime and executed ¹⁵.
The secret is that even critics who admire Dreiser consider him a technically terrible writer. Carrie's sister has been called "the worst novel ever written in the world" and when Carrie reread her sister by another disgusting Harrison Keillor, there were interesting rumors about how much she hated her sister. His books have all the literary elegance of a telephone book.
Thus, his reputation depends only on the hatred of left-wing critics of American capitalism. After 100 years, I can say with confidence that the American system has served us well, and the world of Sister Carrie is not only trivial, but, worst of all, uninteresting to the writer.
Clyde Griffiths, a 12-year-old boy who grew up in poverty in the early 20th century, hopes to one day get rid of his family and rise to the top of American society. He wants to be somebody.
Clyde Asa and Elvira Griffiths are one of four children who preach and sing the gospel on the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, and receive donations along the way. The other children are Julia and Frank, who are younger than Clyde, and several older people, Esther ( nicknamed). Estha ). The Griffith family had previously died in Grand Rapids, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago. In Kansas City, they live on the same floor of a dilapidated house on Bikel Street. Their home serves as an independent Bethel mission, where they hold Church meetings on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. When Clyde's parents left to do God's work, he and his three brothers had to accompany them and participate with them. But Clyde does not want to participate. What kid wants to wear an old dress and sing the national anthem on a street corner? She does weird things from time to time, but her dream is to wear a nice shirt on her back and always give her pocket money. After age 16, Clyde started working as a soda salesman at the age of 7 and at the Clinkle Pharmacy in Brooklyn. She earns $12 a week. Meanwhile, her sister Estha runs away with the actor and her parents discuss moving to Denver again. These changes force Clyde to look inside himself and set a goal for himself. He decides not to go to Denver.
He also dreams of a prestigious and well-paid job. Eventually, he finds a job at the Green Davidson Hotel, one of Kansas City's finest hotels. This position is a big step for him. At first, he is offered counseling for an average of $4-6 per day, up to $42 per week. In addition, she receives free room and board, as well as a regular salary of an additional $15 per month. She can finally get dressed quickly. He couldn't ask for more.
Clyde makes friends at work, and they show him what real life is - delicious food, wine and whiskey, women. He even visits a brothel. Eventually, Clyde meets a beautiful bottle girl named Hortense Briggs, who works at a Kansas City store. When invited, he pretends to be familiar with other colleagues. However, he agrees to see her from time to time, although he does not pay attention to her, accepting small gifts from her. Meanwhile, Estha returns to Kansas City - pregnant but unmarried - after her boyfriend left her for Pittsburgh. He lives in a furnished room outside of his family, and Mrs. Griffiths gives him money and food. Although Clyde insults the man for putting himself in his sister's shoes, he believes that his sister will also add guilt. After all, he thought it would take time to figure out what kind of person he was before running away with her.
As for Hortense, Clyde is not at all interested in him. However, due to the gifts and compliments he has given her, he is patient with her.
At the end of January, Clyde and three of his fellow singers - Oscar Hogglund , Davis Higby and Thomas Retterer - took their girlfriends to a country hotel in Excelsior Springs in a Packard limousine driven by Hegland's friend Willard Sparser . Mr. Kimbark is a wealthy citizen traveling through Asia. In Kimbark's absence, Sparser occasionally takes the limousine to unauthorized locations. Sparser also brings his girlfriend. ....... The couple drinks and dances at a hotel called Tepee - Hortense and Sparser upset Clyde. Her behavior makes her think that she is just a coquette who does not pay much attention to her. However, he later realizes that he is upset and tells her that he will enjoy it a little. When he promises to kiss "if the others don't look at him", Clyde accepts his explanation.
As they return to Kansas City in the afternoon, Sparser makes a turn in his limousine. A nine-year-old girl crosses the street. Sparser doesn't have time to turn around to avoid this, and Sparser crashes into the car before coming to a stop and drags him across the street. People on the sidewalk rush to the scene. Everyone in the car was terrified and shouted, “Oh my God! He hit the girl; "Wow, he killed the boy!" - Oh thanks! "Sir!" "Heavens, what do we do now?"
People on the spot: "Stop the car!" A panicked razor loses speed and screams. Near the scene, a police officer orders a passing car, gets on the treadmill, and chases. There are few houses, the streets are in a deserted suburban area. However, he knocked down a pile of stones at a construction site and knocked down a pile of firewood that had been set aside for building a house. Sparser and his girlfriend Laura Saipe passed out . The rest struggle to get rid of the bruises and cuts. While some of them try to help Sparser and Sipe , Hortense thinks only of herself and runs into the city. Then one of the other girls speaks. “Oh honey, we all need to get out of here. Oh, it's all so terrible."
Intrigued by what was happening, a man living in the area went out into the field and informed everyone that his wife had called an ambulance. Realizing that the police would also come, they all left Sparser and Sipe in the car and fled. The situation moves to the home of Samuel Griffiths in Lycurgus, New York, who is the
brother of Asa, the father of Samuel Clyde, who has returned from a trip to Chicago and Samuel has not seen him for 30 years. Samuel Griffiths made his fortune designing the collar and shirt. At the dinner table, he tells his wife Elizabeth and their three children, Gilbert, Bella and Myra, that he met his nephew (Clyde) at the Union League Hotel in Chicago.
He looks great,” said Samuel.
How did Clyde rest in this hotel? The narrator explains it this way:
He left town after a car accident in Kansas City. In St. Louis, he read a newspaper report about the death of a little girl and the arrest of Sparser and Sipe, who were hospitalized and under police protection. When the police questioned Sparser, he revealed the names and addresses of all his passengers. Consequently, for the next three years, Clyde lived for a time in St. Louis, Peoria, and Milwaukee, becoming a refugee. When one was in a restaurant, another in a shoe store, a third in a grocery store, and so on, he supported himself by calling himself "Harry Tenet."
There he got off the truck and took a room on the west side. When he wrote a letter to his mother, he said that the family was in Denver. On the way to the Union League hotel, he met Retterer , who worked there. According to Rutterer , his sister told him that Sparser had been in prison for a year, but no one knew what happened to Higby and Höglund . Hortense Briggs went to New York with a man who worked in a cigarette store.
Eventually, Clyde got a job at the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago. Three months later, after Retterer spoke on his behalf, he took up his position at the famed Union League Hotel. It was in League of Legends that Clyde met his uncle, Samuel Griffiths, who, noticing that Clyde's behavior was pleasant and similar to that of his son, offered him a job at the Griffiths Collar and Shirt Company, Inc. in Lycurgus. . , Gilbert, CEO.
The narrator then returns to the present state.
Clyde accepts his uncle's offer, leaves for the east, lives in a boarding house and gets a job in a six-story factory. Gilbert assigns him to work at the "terminal".
Clyde soon realizes that his new job is not an automatic entry into the world of the upper shell. Although Samuel Griffiths treats him fairly, Gilbert and other family members consider him socially inferior and do not want to meet him in his own time. The commoners of Lycurgus are sincere with Clyde, but do not invite him to work with them. After all, he has many opportunities to communicate with Griffiths, and this is possible. Or so they think. Surprisingly, when an acquaintance at the boarding house befriends him, Griffiths thinks of the man below him and ignores him altogether. Consequently, because of the actions of himself and his loved ones, Clyde felt alone, lonely.
Then everything changes for the better. First, Samuel Griffiths invites her to his palace home for dinner with his family and guests, including a young woman named Sondra Finchley . She has everything that Clyde dreamed of as a woman: "The smart, stupid and sweet girl that Clyde saw," says the narrator. "It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life." Sondra noticed that Clyde was very similar to Gilbert, but more beautiful than him.
After dinner, Clyde dreams of being part of Griffith's world. At the same time, Samuel Griffiths promotes Clyde over Gilbert's objections and increases his pay from $15 to $25 a week. (Elder Griffiths believes that if Griffiths continues to do his normal work, it will damage his business and his public reputation.) Clyde is excited, he has a personal desk, he wears a suit, and other department heads start doing it. pay attention to it. However, his relatives begin to ignore him again, and he continues to be jealous of what they have and their way of life, and tries to explore the most subtle aspects of their lives ¹⁶.
Miss Finchley leaves her arms - at least temporarily - she begins dating another attractive woman - Roberta Alden, the daughter of a farmer working in her department at the factory. Gilbert Griffiths forbade Clyde from associating with factory girls, but Clyde and Roberta met in secret and grew closer over time. Everything went well, and Clyde, in response to his support, promised never to leave her.
He then meets Sondra Finchley again . It was late, he was leaving, and the limousine in the back seat stopped him. He confuses Clyde with Gilbert and offers him a ride. When he realizes his mistake, he does not mind at all, because he likes Clyde more than Gilbert. After inviting her to various social events, she falls in love with him and falls in love with him - both with him and with his social status.
Of course, Clyde forgets everything about Robert, almost everything. Instead of abruptly breaking up with her, she meets with him from time to time and gradually ends her relationship with him. But the twists of fate surprised her: she was pregnant. The news devastated Clyde as he and Sondra became very close. She let him kiss her and bought her gifts: a necklace, a gold pen, a box of handkerchiefs. “His future depended on him,” says the narrator, “and there were more promises…” It was impossible to cry. Be above your means."
After persuading Roberta to have an abortion, Clyde travels to Schenectady, New York, where no one recognizes her, and buys a box of medicine from an unscrupulous servant. He calms down a bit, comes back and gives them to Roberta. At the same time, he continues his relationship with Sondra. However, when he meets her at a social function, she is greeted by Roberta, who "smiled softly on her shoulder as she entered, even though she was playing the piano at the time."
In the days that followed, when he went to see Roberta, he said that although he overdosed on the pills, they didn't work, and it made him sick and pale. Clyde returns to Schenectady and the dealer who sold him the pills tells him that he needs time for the pills to work. He gives Clyde a second prescription for the same pill. When they fail, he takes Roberta to Gloversville, where a certain doctor orders an abortion. However, despite Roberta's request, she refuses the abortion. Roberta is now ready to have a baby and promises Clyde to marry her. Apparently, he has no other choice - until he sees a newspaper headline:
At first, the thought of murder frightens him. But the more he thinks about killing Roberta, the more he convinces himself that there is no other way out. If she has children, she will be ashamed and die. Marrying Sondra is out of the question. One day, July 8, yy is driving to a resort area in uptown New York. Roberta thinks they are running away. When they arrive, he takes her by boat to Open Lake to get the job done. It won't be difficult, because Roberta can't swim.
As they leave the beach, he takes the camera on the pretext that he will take a picture of her. However, 500 feet from the shore, he experiences "a sudden paralysis of will - courage - hatred or anger," says the narrator. He cannot move, he cannot carry out his plan. When he sits, he seems to be in a trance. A worried Roberta asks why she looks so strange, then leans down to take his hand. Angry at herself for not being able to continue, Roberta reacts to his self-directed actions with a camera in hand, angry at his dominance over her. He doesn't want to upset her; he just wants to stop her by taking her hand. But the camera touches his face and throws him back. The boat freezes and he steps inside. Clyde lets him drown.
There is a coronary examination, an autopsy and, of course, a police examination. Eventually the evidence shows that Roberta's death was not accidental, and the police charge Clyde with premeditated murder. The scandal stems from the fact that Griffiths is a suspect in the case, and the materials of the case were published in newspapers around the country. In Denver , Estha , now married and living apart from her family, reads Clyde's indictment in the Rocky Mountain News. Below is a paragraph from this calculation:
It is said that the young Griffiths, who was only twenty-two years old and who until the day of his arrest was a respected member of the Lycurgus Society of Intelligentsia, stunned his lover, then drowned him, pursued him, then planned. . be a desert in favor of the flag girl. Lawyers for this case were hired by his wealthy uncle Lycurgus, who is still on the sidelines. In addition, according to local sources, none of his relatives helped him defend himself.
Estha immediately goes to her parents ' Star of Hope mission in Bildwell Street and shows the article to her mother. Julia and Frank, the youngest children of Asa Griffith's family, are not at home. Now, 19-year-old Julia and 17-year-old Frank have jobs that will one day allow them to escape from the "boring world they left behind," the story says. However, Griffiths has another child at home - Russell, Estha's illegitimate son , who is not yet four years old. Asa and Elvira Griffiths, posing as orphans, become pregnant in East Pittsburgh and adopted in Kansas City after returning from an abandoned home.
Meanwhile, lawyers and government officials involved in a murder case in New York State have become embroiled in competition and fraud. After all, such a situation can lead to reputation or damage. But Sondra Finchley 's reputation is protected: in all lawsuits she is called "Miss X".
During the trial, the jury found Clyde guilty, and then the defendant Samuel Upham voted to convict Clyde when he was threatened by the other judges. Newspapers all over the country report the verdict. Judge Frederick Oberwalzer then sentenced Clyde to death in the electric chair at Auburn Prison, where he was held in solitary confinement until the day of his execution. Mrs. Elvira Griffiths, who came to her son's aid despite her husband's illness, tried to persuade the governor to change the sentence to life imprisonment, saying that her son was reconciled to God through a minister. His voice is distorted as he pleads with her. Then she cries. He touched the governor, but he refused his request. So Clyde sat down in the electric chair and said goodbye to everyone who had witnessed his death.
Meanwhile, members of Lycurgus Griffiths' family moved to another city to avoid a quarrel. Another family of Griffiths, traveling evangelists, do what Clyde did on the streets of San Francisco as a child. The difference was that Clyde was replaced by Russell, Estha's son.
What will happen to him? Will he become another Clyde?