An American Tragedy

“For true to the standard of the American youth, or the general American attitude toward life, he felt himself above the type of labor which was purely manual.”

Clyde’s notion of The American Dream is one that doesn’t include physical work—a problem since there are few other avenues to improving his financial status. Dreiser connects Clyde’s aversion to physical labor to a more general aspect of culture in the United States. His focus on the impact of larger forces on Clyde’s seemingly individual beliefs is typical of realist texts.

“Here were young fellows and girls in this room, not so much older than himself, laughing and talking and drinking even—not ice-cream sodas and the like, but such drinks no doubt as his mother and father were always speaking against as leading to destruction, and apparently nothing was thought of it.”

Clyde comes of age when he enters the world of work. Being around other young people with more disposable income influences Clyde’s decision to reject his parents’ Christianity. This realization is a pivotal moment in Clyde’s character arc.

“They were the people who, having moved the Cranston Wickwire Company from Albany, and the Finchley Electric Sweeper from Buffalo, and built large factories on the south bank of the Mohawk River, to say nothing of new and grandiose houses in Wykeagy Avenue and summer cottages at Greenwood, some twenty miles northwest, were setting a rather showy, and hence disagreeable, pace to all of the wealthy residents of this region. They were given to wearing the smartest clothes, to the latest novelties in cars and entertainments.”

Elizabeth Griffiths makes a distinction between new money and old money. The conspicuous consumption and materialism of people with new money unsettle Elizabeth’s beliefs about class. Despite her negative perspective on new money, she allows Bella to mingle with the Finchleys and the Cranstons, a choice that suggests that envy and a fear of losing status are the roots of her rejection of the new money.

“Having arrived in Lycurgus about twenty-five years before with some capital and a determination to invest in a new collar enterprise which had been proposed to him, he had succeeded thereafter beyond his wildest expectations. And naturally he was vain about it. His family at this time—twenty-five years later—unquestionably occupied one of the best, as well as the most tastefully constructed residences in Lycurgus.”

Samuel believes that his success shows that The American Dream can be achieved with grit and hard work. The truth is that he starts out ahead in life because of generational wealth, some of which comes from the portion that Asa would have received before their father disinherited Asa. The understated style of the house is a symbol that these Griffiths are old money.

“Clyde had a soul that was not destined to grow up. He lacked decidedly that mental clarity and inner directing application that in so many permits them to sort out from the facts and avenues of life the particular thing or things that make for their direct advancement.”

This passage is a third-person psychological analysis of the reason why Clyde is so poorly prepared to achieve his dream of success. Given that this description of Clyde happens early novel, the implication is that Clyde was always doomed to fail in his quest for The American Dream.

“One had to have castes. […] It was necessary when dealing with the classes and intelligences below one, commercially or financially, to handle them according to the standards to which they were accustomed. And the best of these standards were those which held these lower individuals to a clear realization of how difficult it was to come by money […]. It was good for their characters. It informed and strengthened the minds and spirits of those who were destined to rise. And those who were not should be kept right where they were.”

Samuel and Gilbert cloak their stinginess with Clyde and other employees in moralistic language, but their emphasis on caste shows that they actually believe in Social Darwinism—the belief that people with power of all sorts deserve that power because they are biologically or intellectually more “fit” than people without power. This conservative attitude is one of the reasons that The American Dream is a farce in the novel.

“[G]irls and boys, men and women of various nationalities, and types—Americans, Poles, Hungarians, French, English—and for the most part—if not entirely touched with a peculiar something—ignorance or thickness of mind or body, or with a certain lack of taste and alertness or daring, which seemed to mark them one and all as of the basement world which he had seen only this afternoon. Yet in some streets and stores, particularly those nearer Wykeagy Avenue, a better type of girl and young man who might have been and no doubt were of the various office groups of the different companies over the river—neat and active.”

Clyde’s believes that traits like intelligence and ambition are only biologically determined and that bodies and comportment are expressions of those inherent traits. This set of discredited beliefs is part of the realist literary tradition.

“In Chicago, and recently—because of what happened in Kansas City—he had sought to be as retiring and cautious as possible. For—after that and while connected with the club, he had been taken with the fancy of trying to live up to the ideals with which the seemingly stern face of that institution had inspired him—conservatism—hard work—saving one’s money—looking neat and gentlemanly. It was such an Eveless paradise, that.”

Clyde believes that if he looks powerful, he can be powerful. He believes that appearance plays an important role in his ability to achieve the American Dream. Clyde also makes a connection between disciplining his body and being powerful, touting puritan ideals that are reinforced by the image of an “Eveless paradise”—once a vision for Puritan colonizers of the United States.

“It won’t do. We’ll have to make a change, switch him around somewhere else where he won’t look like that.”

Samuel’s decision to take Clyde out of the shrinking room is about making the family look better and preventing workers from associating a Griffiths with manual labor. This decision isn’t the result of any moral qualms. It is instead about maintaining class distinctions. Class and appearance thus play an important role in the little power that Clyde later accrues.

“As for the parents of Roberta, they were excellent examples of that native type of Americanism which resists facts and reveres illusion. Titus Alden was […] a Republican because his father before him was a Republican and because this county was Republican. It never occurred to him to be otherwise. And, as in the case of his politics and his religion, he had borrowed all his notions of what was right and wrong from those about him.”

Dreiser offers an analysis of the psychology of people from the small towns of the United States to characterize Titus and explore the influences that make Roberta vulnerable to Clyde later. This quote also develops the theme of The Negative Impact of Religion in America; Dresier suggests that learned morality doesn’t make for better or more thoughtful people.

“And so it was that Roberta, after encountering Clyde and sensing the superior world in which she imagined he moved, and being so taken with the charm of his personality, was seized with the very virus of ambition and unrest that afflicted him.”

Roberta also has aspirations to The American Dream. Her ambition is to have a relationship (or marriage) with Clyde—a goal that shows the role of gender and class in her notion of what it means to be a success. Her ambition is a “virus,” like religion is described at the beginning of the novel, because it is also based on unexamined beliefs caught from others.

“For, true to her complex, the moment she heard that Clyde was so highly connected and might even have money, she was not so sure that he could have any legitimate interest in her. For was she not a poor working girl? And was he not a very rich man’s nephew? He would not marry her, of course. And what other legitimate thing would he want with her? She must be on her guard in regard to him.”

Roberta’s fears about Clyde show her awareness of the importance of class and gender differences. Her concerns prove to be valid ones, but her attraction to Clyde overwhelms her good sense. Her internal conflict between attraction and caution speaks to the theme of Appearance Versus Reality.

“[T]he beautiful, the exquisite Sondra whom months before he had met at his uncle’s, and concerning whose social activities during the preceding summer he had been reading in the papers. And now here she was as lovely as ever, seated in this beautiful car and addressing him, apparently.”

The similarity in how Clyde describes Sondra and her car shows that he sees Sondra as an object and status symbol. He aspires to be with her because he believes she will be a help to him as he attempts to achieve The American Dream. He is walking by the exclusive homes of his uncle and other wealthy people in Lycurgus, so when she hails him, he gains a sense of belonging that soothes his fear that he will never achieve success.

“One couldn’t ever be anything much more than friendly with a moneyless clerk or pensioner, whatever his family connections, whereas if he had a little money and some local station elsewhere, the situation was entirely different.”

Sondra and her friends are cautious about Clyde until he tells the lie that his father runs a hotel in Denver. Their easy dismissal of Clyde up until this point shows that a person must already have money and status to climb up the class ladder; in the novel, people who start with nothing can’t hope to achieve The American Dream with hard work alone.

“The truth was that in this crisis he was as interesting an illustration of the enormous handicaps imposed by ignorance, youth, poverty and fear as one could have found. Technically he did not even know the meaning of the word ‘midwife,’ or the nature of the services performed by her. (And there were three here in Lycurgus at this time in the foreign family section.)”

Dreiser situates Clyde and Roberta’s failure to use contraception as the result of larger societal forces. The bigger picture that Dreiser paints is that mobile, striving young people who leave home in search of success in cities and bigger towns like Lycurgus are hampered by their lack of connection to others.

“[A]lthough in several cases in the past ten years [...] he had assisted in extricating from the consequences of their folly several young girls of good family who had fallen from grace and could not otherwise be rescued, still he was opposed to aiding, either by his own countenance or skill, any lapses or tangles not heavily sponsored by others. [...] It was too dangerous and ethically and socially wrong and criminal into the bargain.”

Dr. Glenn provides abortion services to middle-class and affluent women, but he won’t provide an abortion for Roberta because of her class and suspicion that she isn’t married. This double-standard shows the impact of the intersection of class and gender inequality on Roberta’s aspirations. Glenn sees himself as morally upright, but Dreiser uses his refusal to help Roberta to show the hypocrisy of wealthy, religious society.

“Do not fear! Do not be weak! Walk through the woods by night, not by day—so that when seen again you will be in Three Mile Bay or Sharon [...]. Use a false name and alter your handwriting as much as possible. Assume that you will be successful. And whisper, whisper—let your language be soft, your tone tender, loving, even. It must be, if you are to win her to your will now. So the Efrit of his own darker self.”

Dreiser includes an entire chapter detailing the thought process whereby Clyde convinces himself that it would be acceptable to murder Roberta. Clyde and his “darker self” are one and the same, but Clyde partitions himself into two: the Clyde who appears to be an upstanding young man with a bright future and the Clyde who gives rein to his violent, irrational impulses. Exposing the fiction of Clyde and his evil double is Dreiser’s approach to representing the psychology of a killer. Passages like these also call into question Clyde’s later claim that he didn’t intend to kill Roberta. The reader is left to discern his truth and his lies, like a jury.

“[M]ight not this case prove the very thing to fix the attention and favor of the people upon one man—the incumbent district attorney—a close and helpful friend of his, thus far—and so sufficiently redound to his credit and strength, and through him to the party ticket itself, so that at the coming election all might be elected—the reigning district attorney thus winning for himself not only the nomination for but his election to the six-year term judgeship. Stranger things than this had happened in the political world.”

The Tragedy of American Justice is that every character with power—Heit, in this case—is more focused on politics and self-interest than justice. Heit is hoping that the death of Roberta is a murder before he knows many of the facts of the case, so bias is present in the case from the beginning.

“For he himself was convinced that Clyde had murdered the girl in cold blood. And for want of a bit of incriminating proof, was such a young, silent, vain crook as this to be allowed to escape? [...] And in consequence, upon the same day that Heit and Mason were personally re-measuring the wounds upon Roberta’s face and head, Burleigh slyly threading two of Roberta’s hairs in between the door and the lens of the camera, so that Mason and Heit a little while later unexpectedly coming upon them.”

Burton Burleigh plants evidence to strengthen Mason’s case. The rhetorical question forces the reader to consider their own perception of justice. Burton’s impulse to plant evidence is driven by a desire to make his boss look good and by his desire to punish Clyde for violating Burleigh’s sense of right and wrong.

“Yet Mason, over-awed by the wealth of the Finchleys and the Griffiths, loath to part with Sondra’s name, simply asserting for the present that she was the daughter of a very wealthy manufacturer in Lycurgus, whose name he did not care to furnish—yet not hesitating to show the bundle of letters carefully tied with a ribbon by Clyde. But Roberta’s letters on the other hand being described in detail,—even excerpts of some of them—the more poetic and gloomy being furnished the Press for use, for who was there to protect her.”

Mason grants Sondra her privacy but doesn’t do the same for Roberta because he is overawed by the power, wealth, and political influence of the Finchleys. Self-interest drives his decisions, showing the influence that money has on the justice system in the United States.

“‘Peanuts!’ ‘Popcorn!’ ‘Hot dogs!’ ‘Get the story of Clyde Griffiths, with all the letters of Roberta Alden. Only twenty-five cents!’ (This being a set of duplicate copies of Roberta’s letters which had been stolen from Mason’s office by an intimate of Burton Burleigh’s and by him sold to a penny-dreadful publisher of Binghamton.”

Mason and the press have a cozy relationship that leads to biased and sensational coverage of the case. Mason’s self-interest sets the tone for his subordinates, who leak important information that helps spoil the jury pool. Dreiser uses this representation of the press and the public who consume their coverage to show the many groups that are complicit in making sure that Clyde can’t get a fair trial.

“It’s like having to pay for potatoes, or for suits of clothes, with corn or beans instead of money, when you have money to pay with but when, because of the crazy notions on the part of some one, they won’t believe that the money you have is genuine. So you’ve got to use the potatoes or beans. And beans is what we’re going to give ’em. But the justification is that you’re not guilty [...] You’ve sworn to me that you didn’t intend to strike her there at the last, whatever you might have been provoked to do at first. And that’s enough for me. You’re not guilty.”

The comparison between lying on the stand to avoid the death penalty and trading in beans and potatoes shows Belknap’s awareness that the deck is stacked against Clyde due partly to matters of economics. His argument is that lying is justified, given the context of Clyde fighting for his life.

“Yet out of the whole twelve but one man—Samuel Upham, a druggist—(politically opposed to Mason and taken with the personality of Jephson)—sympathizing with Belknap and Jephson. And so pretending that he had doubts as to the completeness of Mason’s proof until [...] he was threatened with exposure and the public rage and obloquy which was sure to follow in case the jury was hung [...]. Whereupon, having a satisfactory drug business in North Mansfield, he at once decided that it was best to pocket this opposition to Mason and agree.”

Impartial jurors are supposed to be the backstop against unfairness in the justice system, but prejudice and self-interest are here just as well. The druggist is somewhat willing to acquit Clyde because of personal feelings and politics. He ultimately chooses financial security over Clyde, reflecting Belknap’s speech in which justice is compared to trade.