An American Tragedy
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An American Tragedy is a famous American novel, by Theodore Dreiser. Written 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, and attempting to shed light on societal evils.
The well-known film A Place in the Sun is based on 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 as 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.
Plot summary
Clyde's downfall begins when he takes a job as a bell-boy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more liberal 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 is forced to flee Kansas City, and after a brief stay in Chicago, he reestablishes himself at the collar factory of his uncle in Lycurgus, New York.
Although Clyde vows not to give in to women in the way that caused his Kansas City downfall, he quickly succumbs to the charms of Roberta Alden, a poor girl working under him at the factory. While Clyde initially feels fulfilled by Roberta, his ambition forces him to realize that he could never marry her. He dreams of the aristocratic 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.
Trying unsuccessfully to secure an abortion of the child, Clyde procrastinates the decision while his relationship with Sondra continues to mature. As he realizes that he has a wonderful opportunity to marry into such an aristocratic family, Clyde hatches a diabolic scheme to drown Roberta in a manner that seems accidental.
Upon taking Roberta for a canoe ride in one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, Clyde loses the nerve to murder her -- however, Roberta accidentally falls out of the boat and drowns, Clyde being too cowardly to save her. 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, and with no legal support from his wealthy relatives, Clyde is found guilty and sentenced to death. The jailhouse scenes and the correspondence between Clyde and his mother stand out as an exemplar of pathos in modern literature.