An American Tragedy

I also thought the fictional Judge Oberwaltzer completely lost control of his court. First, Mason made several discovery violations that wouldn't have gone unpunished, even in the s for instance, he claims he has an eyewitness to murder, even though he doesn't; what happened to turning over your witness list? Second, Mason is continually allowed to badger, argue with, and scream at Clyde during cross-examination. Third, Mason is allowed to "connect up" testimony after adducing testimony; thus, even when he can't "connect up" the testimony to make it relevant, the jury still hears it, and all the motions to strike in the world couldn't save Clyde.

Oberwaltzer should've dismissed the jury and taken an offer of proof. As a side note, I was a little surprised when Mason finally objected as to leading questions, about thirty pages after Belknap had Clyde testify in narrative form on direct examination. Good lawyering, Mason, glad you finally woke up. Eventually, the case goes to the jury, but not before Dreiser gives us the jury instructions.

There is a verdict and an appeal and we get to read part of the opinion from the NY Court of Appeals. Then it comes down to the final act of the tragedy. In this section of the book, I was actually moved when Clyde's mother comes to visit and, for a moment, stops being a religious zealot and acts as a mother: We see them as fully human because none is fully likable.

It is an amazing achievement, one that never could have occurred if an editor was involved. Finally, when the book was finished, I went back and looked at the cover once more. There, in the lake, I could see, faintly, what appeared to be three brushstrokes one horizontal, two vertical resembling two people on a canoe. If you read the book, you will realize that you can judge it by its cover. You just have to look for the details. Feb 06, Chrissie rated it it was ok Shelves: This moves at the pace of a snail! A long novel is great - but it must keep your attention every bit of the way.

I haven't given up yet. I struggled through all 34 hours and 16 minutes of this audiobook. I like long books, yet this remained a struggle through most of it. Words and phrases are repeated continually. For a while I sat down and copied all the repetitive lines: He must think, think, think For fear, for fear Darling, precious, baby That might mean, that might mean, what might that not mean?!

Always watching, watching If only, if only After an hour of listening my husband would enter the room and ask what had happened. Nothing yet; the same thing is still being discussed! This way of writing makes the speed of the novel extremely slow! It is this that destroyed the novel for me. It does have content. Themes focused upon are religious salvation, one's social standing, politics, capital punishment, adultery, murder, guilt, court proceedings and judicial biases, the importance of education.

The book certainly does show you clearly why what happens happens and why Clyde, the central character, ends up in the mess that he ends up in. Is it his fault, the mess he ends up in? I will tell you what I think the book makes stunningly clear - what happens to Clyde could so easily happen to you. One misstep, and down you go. Please readers, don't judge the book by the movie. That is relatively short! Here you have to trudge through a million lines. On completion I went to Wiki and discovered that this story is based on a true crime story!

I feel that those chapters that focus on the crime sequence are the best of the whole novel. The audiobook I listened to is read by Dan John Miller. His execution is good. He switches tone, just as the lines of the book's text do. Jeez, when he gave us the baby-talk lines of Sandra Finchley, he drove me nuts. But those are the lines that Dreiser puts in the novel.

He executes them well, not poorly. The whole story revolves around Clyde, poor naive Clyde, who cannot make up his mind who he loves! Roberta or Sandra, and the two different worlds they come from! View all 23 comments. Dreiser based it on the notorious criminal prosecution of a young man named Chester Gillette for the murder in the summer of of a year-old lady found drowned near an overturned boat at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. He wa "Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

He was executed in the electric chair in March In the novel, Clyde Griffiths is ambitious, driven by a need to escape poverty and rise way above its stigma, after growing up impoverished as the son of traveling evangelists. After working as a bellman in his teen years in Kansas City, then in Chicago where he runs into his uncle whom he's never met before , he goes to work, after basically inviting himself, at his uncle's shirt collar factory in upstate New York.

After working his way up the ladder a bit, he falls for pure beauty, a young, rather bland underling of rural beginnings named Roberta. Yet he is overly fascinated with and allured by the wealth and society of the town being related, but not close to, one of its richest families , so when the town's prettiest and most popular, but shallow, young socialite starts paying him attention, he dumps Roberta.

Roberta then finds out she's pregnant. They look for a doctor to perform an abortion, to no avail. Clyde's plans of a new glamorous life are on the rocks. You can probably guess where this is headed. This is not an ingenious criminal plan drawn up by our finest crime writers. Clyde must be one of the dumbest criminals ever. To be fair though, Dreiser was aiming more for Clyde's thought processes and the circumstances that brought him to the point where he would take the life of his girlfriend pregnant with his child. The novel is loaded with symbolism and foreshadowing e.

And I sort of lost interest once it became apparent to me that he didn't have the slightest chance of being deemed not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Also, I found the dialogue hokey at times, the prose quite plastic, and chunks of the novel dispassionate due to blending reporting into the narrative. While this was probably sensational in the late s after its publication, it pains me to say that our society nearly a century later including me, in all matters besides local, has become almost numb to such reported true life crimes except when the reporting goes much deeper into the criminal psyche or provides more salacious details which wasn't the case here.

Jan 02, Sarah rated it did not like it Recommends it for: The tragedy is having to have read those pages View all 3 comments. Jul 23, Marvin rated it really liked it. An American Tragedy is one of the short-listers in the never-ending competition for the honor of Great American Novel. Yes, I know some say Moby Dick has it wrapped up but I just can't identify with psychotic captains obsessing about big fish. Dreiser's massive novel resonates with me. Even though its morals may be dated, the themes of class conflict and the struggle of desire over conscience still speak loud and clear.

Clyde Griffiths is not very admirable but he is understandable. The only rea An American Tragedy is one of the short-listers in the never-ending competition for the honor of Great American Novel. The only reason why I give this four-an-a-half stars instead of five is because the trial portion and the end being dragged out. Overall it is an exciting and thought-provoking American classic.

Are you an aspiring writer? If so, have you been told that you are a little too wordy? Do people complain that the dinner parties you write about take longer to read than they would to actually happen in real life? When going through the editing process for your latest novel, do you watch in terror and sadness as your editor demolishes your creation, as the pages fall away and leave a measly pile of only seven or eight hundred pages behind?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I have s Are you an aspiring writer? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I have some advice for you! Shut the fuck up. Right now, in fact. Go to the homes of all your editors and all the people who have ever said you write too many words, destroy all their posessions with a sledge hammer, and beat them with a dead, partially decomposed trout. Then kidnap them, take them to a house stocked with all the provisions you can get, and force all of them to read a copy of An American Tragedy, because I don't care how verbose you are, you will never reach the heights of Theodore Dreiser.

Those people are wrong. This is not the case with An American Tragedy. The story it has to tell is not very complex at all, taking place during about five years in the life of its main character, Clyde Griffiths. The narrative is straightforward, and if you took out all the extraneous descriptions and digressions, I would guess you could summarize it in five hundred words or so, as I did in this genius excerpt from an essay I did on the book during my college days. It got a horrible grade, and I may or may not have failed the class, but that's only because the professor didn't understand its masterful prose and profound discussion of the ideas of the book: Clyde Griffiths is the son of nomadic missionaries, and he, like, really hates it, you know?

At one point, Clyde and his friends are driving around in a stolened car, and they run over some kid, at which point he decides he has to get the fuck out of dodge, because that's what you do after you murder a child, especially if that child is a whiny little fucker who decides to destroy all your delicate valuables which cost thousands of dollars.. Not that I would know, of course. I read about it somewhere. That I didn't write. They couldn't prove anything. So he gets out of town and heads off to Lycurgus, new York to work at the shirt collar factory of his long lost uncle.

While working there, he meets Roberta Alden, over whom his genitals begin to twitch and make weird growling noises for some reason. They fall in love, have lots of sex, and she gets pregnant. Seeing as this is the 'S, condoms are not easily available, and he falls in love with yet another hot lass, called Sondra Finchley, who will give him access to the high social standing he craves, he struggles to find a way to get rid of Roberta's child so he can dump her in peace and move on.

After several unsuccessful incidents, he decides that if he can't kill the little bastard alone, Roberta, unfortunately, has to go. So he contacts MTV, and says he has an idea for a cool new reality show, called "Let's Hunt and Kill Roberta Alden", and assures them that it will all involve special effects, no one will actually die, and let's be honest here, off the record, I never told you this, if you know what I mean, Roberta isn't even that hot and she's poor besides that, so if she dies, if, let's say, she gets hit in the face with a camera and drowns, the world won't lose much, America has no room for poor people who aren't attractive, and with a name like Roberta, she's probably Mexican, so there's three strikes right there, amirite or amirite?

They agree, and he takes her out on a row boat with all of America watching, and hits her in the face with a camera until she falls off the boat and, you know, gets her drown on. One of the six intelligent viewers in the country notices that the death looks a little too realistic to be caused by any special effect, and calls the police. Clyde is arrested, a trial takes place during which we get to hear all the events we've spent the last seven hundred pages reading about repeated for an additional two hundred pages, and shockingly, he is found guilty and sentenced to death.

While waiting for his execution, Clyde takes a few funny looking pills he got off of a fellow murderer one cell down, and tries to get in contact with God by praying really hard as the pills enter his system and hoping something happens. To be more exact, an angel comes down from heaven, picks him up by his head between its giant fingers, and flies him up to God's bedroom. God is sprawled on a divan, watching American Gladiators and scratching his nuts. Clyde begs for God's help, explaining his situation, barely able to get his word's out propperly.

It's down right criminal, if you ask me! It's c--" "Not you. I've got this woman who won't stop praying at me for some new shoes, I looked down at them, and fuck those pumps are unforgiveable! I think she'll need to find fifty dollars in her coat tomorrow. It sounds a little like No, I don't think I can let this slide. You were a shitty killer, to be perfectly honest.

Anyone who made as many mistakes as you did deserves whatever they get. And he finds himself back in bed, being kicked in the ribs by one of the guards and listening to inmates tell him to shut up. After several months, a team of officers come into his cell, and pump his face full of lead. No one cares all that much. But where it took me words, Theodore Dreiser did it in , It has been said before, but An American Tragedy may be one of the worst written classic novels currently in the literary canon.

Dreiser needed a few rounds with an editor, by which I mean that an editor should have threatened him with a gun until he cut this shit down to something more manageable. His grammar and syntax is cringe-worthy. Those authors could write sentences humming with beautiful prose, with perfectly placed phrases that make you first give up any ambitions you may once have had of being a writer, because you can't possibly write that well, no matter how hard you try and how long you work at it, your prose is pitifully bad after you read their work, then motivate you to try harder and write better, because you may not ever write that well, but you're going to try goddamnit, and no one is going to stop you.

No, these are just long. I don't remember a single quote-worthy line from the book's prose, only that Dreiser really likes the word "social", as well as the phrases "not a little" and "in so far as". And that's just the writing. The insane amounts of exposition is a different story altogether.

This novel has perhaps the most omniscient narrator I have ever seen. About half the time, it focuses on Clyde, and the other half is spent on every single character in the book, no matter how minor and inconsequential. It shifts points of view several times in one chapter, sometimes even in one page. Every character's motivations and feelings are laid out with no ambiguities. One incident that stands out involves Roberta going to a doctor to try and convince him to give her an abortion.

He spends fifteen or so pages talking about how Clyde goes around looking for a doctor who will perform an abortion and then finding one, then ten more showing us exactly how Clyde and Roberta plan to get this done, then another ten pages talking about the doctor and his life and motivations, then another ten talking about the visit, only to reveal that the doctor ain't doing none of those sinnful abortions, cuz he's a good Chrishchan!

So while the description of the visit is necessary, of course, we end up learning about the doctor's life story for absolutely no reason because he has almost no impact on the story. And the entire book is like this. There is repetition of stories three and four and five times, there are digressions going on for several pages that have nothing to do with anything, you are told how you should feel and who your sympathies should lie with.

I shudder to think what Dreiser would be like if he was living in the 21st century, calling himself TeddyD69 and writing porn on IRC chat. As verbose and unnecessarily dense this book is, the effect it sets out to produce works. Because everyone's thoughts are laid out in such a straightforward manner, you experience every event just as the characters do. Or at least I did. To demonstrate what I mean, I knew exactly what was going to happen in the book when I started reading it, because earlier I had read most of the plot summary on Wikipedia.

But because Dreiser forced me to live in his book during the three weeks I read it, I felt Clyde's doubts and fears, his contradictions and hypocrisy. As a result, there were maybe three or four times during my reading, when Clyde sets out to kill Roberta, for a non-spoiler example, when I seriously wondered if someone had vandalised the Wikipedia entry and he wasn't going to kill her after all, because his internal struggle is portrayed with such realistic pathos that for a moment, I lived in him.

That likely doesn't make sense at all for anyone who hasn't read this or a similar book, but that's how it went. As I read, The clunkily written, often infuriating novel began to transform, slowly, into something great. I have to wonder if this was what Dreiser intended, if an editor did try to get him to cut it down by a few hundred pages, but he refused because he knew that such an edit would kill the effect.

Would I have felt Roberta's grief over Clyde's breaking away from her if the relationship had not been described in microscopic detail? Would the scene where Clyde kills Roberta lose any of its impact if the abortion doctor bit, as well as all their other attempts to get rid of the child, had been shrunk down from a hundred pages to ten? After reading the book, my answer is an emphatic yes, but when I look at it in a little more depth, my answer is something like, "Uh, noyesno. View all 4 comments. Jun 04, Ann rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: This book is a wide-ranging indictment of American values, circa s or s.

Written by Theodore Dreiser in , it presents his view that class distinctions, inherited wealth, and stringent social restrictions make a mockery of the so-called American Dream of a meritocracy. Other topics that Dreiser takes on are the not-so-just justice system, organized and independent religions, the shallow lives of the wealthy, the press and many more. The novel begins with a look at the constricted life This book is a wide-ranging indictment of American values, circa s or s.

The novel begins with a look at the constricted life of fifteen year old Clyde Griffiths, who escapes his family of street corner missionaries, looking for a way to participate in the trappings of the wealthy. In other words, a young person with the world before him, a Horatio Alger type. It ends with a claustrophobic world that consists of Clyde's mind and psyche, and his living space of under a few hundred square feet. What happens in between is richly nuanced and finely detailed. Dreiser's prose is sometimes difficult. Some of his sentences are so convoluted that I had to read them twice to understand.

However, bear with his writing style because at other times, it is fantastic. Some sequences create an almost compulsive atmosphere that kept me turning the pages. This book is also based on a real life event that apparently was front page news across the country. I picked it up because it took place in the Adirondacks both the book and the event , and that's where I live. Next up is his next most famous book, Sister Carrie. May 01, Eddie Watkins rated it it was amazing Shelves: This book raises dullness of style to sublimely convoluted heights. It's really one of the oddest books, stylistically, I've ever read.

I read it years ago and I still can't pinpoint the source of this oddness, though I suspect it's the sheer complex awkwardness of the prose, which reminded me of something Henry James might've written if forced to type into a BlackBerry with his elbows. Audio 53 Driesler took entirely too long to get to the point. The story seemed almost overdeveloped. It's based on the true story of the Cigar Girl. Look up the book written on the murder case the factual account is much better. It is narrated by an omniscient author, which makes it as believable as if the readers were eye-witnesses.

It is also the personal story of Clyde, the protagonist -- a selfish, self-absorbed social climber who places more value upon wealth and luxury than upon human feelings. The characters in this novel are so clearly portrayed that the reader "An American Tragedy," is a tale of conflicts, conscience, and polarized socioeconomic classes, from stark poverty to ostentatious luxury and opulence. Each character's words and actions are consistent with the picture Dreiser had previously painted of them. Nothing is out of place in their demeanor. The courtroom scenes were dynamically descriptive, with the prosecuting attorney's brilliant piecing together of the nefarious incident.

One could easily say the construction and presentation of his case were not only a tribute to the justice system of that time, but also to human intelligence. The author, Theodore Dreiser, is a master of writing and story-telling -- so much so that this was my second reading of the book. He observes many details, from the smallest and seemingly most insignificant to the most important and major events -- yet another reason the descriptions of background, places, and mores come to life for the reader.

At times, it may seem that the tale goes on and on without end, but be assured there is nothing superfluous about the details. They all serve to place you right there in the middle of things, seeing what the narrator sees.. Whether the outcome of this novel is to your liking or not, it is still worthy of profound appreciation. So pleased I decided to read it again! An incredible read and a page turner. Part crime story, part trial story. Based on actual events in the lake areas of the Adirondacks in upper NY state, I read this with the Classics for Beginners group.

Also, my mother lived in this area when I was just a toddler. Dreiser's pure genius is that he makes the reader become very sympathetic with the protagonist Clyde Griffiths, son of religious evangelists who preach on street corners and are even poorer than church mice. Nephew to the wealthy owne An incredible read and a page turner.

Nephew to the wealthy owner of a factory who feels guilty for his brother who was left out of the father's will and gives him a chance, but does not really welcome him to the family. Clyde wants, wants, wants. The true villain of the piece isn't so much Clyde - though he does do bad things - but American society. There is no aristocracy, but we are still not a classless society.

He wants to better himself, he wants finer things, but because of his upbringing he is at a disadvantage. He is not lazy. He is a hard worker. But his desire for more is what gets him in the end. I loved this book. I can see myself re-reading it in the future. Aug 01, Kelly rated it liked it Shelves: Dreiser is no joke. Make no mistake; An American Tragedy is long and often times obsessive in its detail. There are approximately pages of exposition leading up to the climatic moment! In truth it took everything in me to finish this book and not because I wasn't enjoying the story.

It just seemed like it would never end. Yet in my moments of weakness, when I felt like I just couldn't go on, the story of Clyde Griffiths and his struggle to claw his way up the American social ladder wa Wow! Yet in my moments of weakness, when I felt like I just couldn't go on, the story of Clyde Griffiths and his struggle to claw his way up the American social ladder was enough to keep me going.

His dogged attempts to circumvent all the socio-economic factors standing in the way of his success and his eventual comeuppance made this novel worth all the effort. I see some have shelved this as banned books - off to check up the goods on that. Banned in Boston, Mass. View all 9 comments. May 02, Duffy Pratt rated it did not like it Shelves: This is probably the longest really bad book that I've ever read. I gave up several times, and really can't say why I came back and ultimately persevered through it.

I first gave up after this wonderful interior monologue passage: What a rough world it was anyhow. How queer things went! I might have come back to see if the writing could get any worse. And on that score, Dreiser did not disappoint. There's a literary atrocity on just about every page of this book This is probably the longest really bad book that I've ever read.

There's a literary atrocity on just about every page of this book. By the last third, Dreiser has basically done away with niceties, like subjects and verbs. The reductionism continues until we get passages like: Not himself -- not that -- not his day. A whole year must elapse before that could possibly happen -- or so Jephson had said.

But, at that --! Now, just imagine pages of this. Much of it repetitious, and it getting worse and worse, sort of like Chinese water torture, but with exclamation points instead of drops of water. But what of the characters? They are mostly notable for their shallowness and general unlike-ability. In over pages, you would think that Dreiser might take the time to let us get to know some of them.

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Rather, he presents us with the broadest of cut-outs. Being generous, I'd say that he was doing something akin to kabuki theatre, and leaving his characters as archetypes to make the story more general. But I'm not feeling generous. So, instead, I think Dreiser basically hated everyone he was writing about, and couldn't bother to really get inside them or to humanize them, because then we and more importantly, he might come to like them. As for the story: A guy leaves his evangelist family and goes off to make his fortune.

He starts to work for his uncle, the owner of a factory. One rule of the factory is no relationships between supervisors and the female staff. He breaks the rule in secret. At the same time, he breaks into the local society and falls for a spoiled rich girl. He would like to abandon his factory worker girlfriend, but he knocked her up, and she could expose and ruin him. So he plots to kill her instead, and does kill her, though not exactly the way he intended.

He is tried and executed. Is it a tragedy? I was taught that tragedies had a tragic hero who suffered from some fatal flaw. Hamlet and indecision, Macbeth and ambition, Othello and jealousy. Without their flaws, these were all great men. Clyde Griffith is a bundle of flaws, but without any heroic characteristics that I could discern, except perhaps that people thought he was good looking.

But as for flaws: So, despite the title, I don't see this story as a tragedy at all. Except perhaps for this: I've seen some people praise this for the candid look it takes at sex. But here's what I see. Two people have pre-marital sex, and they both die as a result of it. That's really forward thinking and candid. And even as far as that goes, Thomas Hardy covered this same territory much better. And then there's Anna Karinina. I've also seen praise for the expose of society and ambition. But this book was published the same year as The Great Gatsby, and Gatsby, and again there is no comparison.

Clyde's problem is not that he is ambitious. He is a little ambitious, but he seems more passive that anything else when it comes to his ambition, and it's definitely not presented as the cause of his downfall. And yet, there must have been something compelling about this book. How else could I have willingly suffered through all pages of it. I ask myself that, and if I were in a more generous mood, I might be able to come up with some reasons. But I'm not in a generous mood, and after so many pages of the writing getting worse and worse, I don't see any point in being charitable.

Bad writing, bad story, bad characterization, bad social commentary. Jul 03, Coco. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with prostitutes. Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with manipulative Hortense Briggs, who takes advantage of him. After being in a car accident in which a young girl loses her life, Clyde is forced to run away from the town in search for the new life.

I had no idea at the time I picked this up that it is supposed to be one of the most important American novels of the 20th century—and so I read it without any preconceptions, and enjoyed it all the better for that. Despite the somewhat archaic quality of the writing I enjoyed the book, which comments on the permutations of class distinctions, equality, status and social ambition.

I also enjoyed it because even though I already had a vague idea how the story was going to end it's based on the r I had no idea at the time I picked this up that it is supposed to be one of the most important American novels of the 20th century—and so I read it without any preconceptions, and enjoyed it all the better for that. I also enjoyed it because even though I already had a vague idea how the story was going to end it's based on the real-life murderer Chester Gillette , I still found myself at various moments rooting for Clyde, hoping he would make the most of the opportunity his uncle had given him and prove all of society wrong.

But you already know what happens from the title: Nov 01, Naomi rated it really liked it. I can't believe I hadn't found this classic before. What a great read this was! Once I got it started, I couldn't put this book down. The author was masterful in laying out the storyline slowly and methodically without wearing it down. The wealthy characters are sordid too, in the way they are unbearably snobby. The upper class of the second part of the book, set in the imaginary town of Lycurgus, New York, is a merchant class the heads of its families are almost all factory owners and manufacturers.

There is no true "old money" here, which could be why Lycurgus's upper crust seems so determined to pull the ladder up after themselves. Young Clyde is given a chance to succeed by his uncle Samuel, the only instance in the novel where anyone is given a chance to rise in society. The youth of Lycurgus are willing to accept Clyde into their circle only because of his wealthy relatives and his good looks ironically, he is widely considered more handsome than his lookalike wealthy cousin.

Certain descriptive passages have enormous appeal: Here Dreiser discusses young Bella Griffiths, age 17 or As her mother saw it, too many youths and men were already buzzing around, and so posing the question of a proper husband for her. 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 one of that vast company of individuals who are born, pass through and die out of the world without ever quite getting any one thing straight. They appear, blunder, and end in a fog. Like his two brothers, both older and almost as nebulous, Titus was a farmer solely because his father had been a farmer.

And he was here on this farm because it had been willed to him and because it was easier to stay here and try to work this than it was to go elsewhere. He 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.

A single, serious, intelligent or rightly informing book had never been read by any member of this family — not one. But they were nevertheless excellent, as conventions, morals and religions go — honest, upright, God-fearing and respectable.

An American Tragedy | novel by Dreiser | theranchhands.com

The preceding day — a day of somewhat reduced activities on the lake from which he had just returned — he and Sondra and Stuart and Bertine, together with Nina Temple and a youth named Harley Baggott, then visiting the Thurstons, had motored first from Twelfth Lake to Three Mile Bay, a small lakeside resort some twenty-five miles north, and from thence, between towering walls of pines, to Big Bittern and some other smaller lakes lost in the recesses of the tall pines of the region to the north of Trine Lake. And en route, Clyde, as he now recalled, had been most strangely impressed at moments and in spots by the desolate and for the most part lonely character of the region.

The narrow and rain-washed and even rutted nature of the dirt roads that wound between tall, silent and darksome trees — forests in the largest sense of the word — that extended for mile and miles apparently on either hand. The decadent and weird nature of some of the bogs and tarns on either side of the only comparatively passable dirt roads which here and there were festooned with funereal or viperous vines, and strewn like deserted battlefields with soggy and decayed piles of fallen and cross-crossed logs — in places as many as four deep — one above the other — in the green slime that an undrained depression in the earth had accumulated.

Other boys did not have to do as he did. He meditated now more determinedly than ever a rebellion by which he would rid himself of the need of going out in this way. Let his elder sister go if she chose; she liked it. His younger sister and brother might be too young to care. That is the thought which always keeps me up. Sorrow and the weight of sin eventually bring some of them to see the error of their way.

They now entered into the narrow side street from which they had emerged and walking as many as a dozen doors from the corner, entered the door of a yellow single-story wooden building, the large window and the two glass panes in the central door of which had been painted a gray-white. Across both windows and the smaller panels in the double door had been painted: Meetings Every Wednesday and Saturday night, 8 to Sundays at 11, 3 and 8. That such a family, thus cursorily presented, might have a different and somewhat peculiar history could well be anticipated, and it would be true.

Indeed, this one presented one of those anomalies of psychic and social reflex and motivation such as would tax the skill of not only the psychologist but the chemist and physicist as well, to unravel.

Novel Summary

To begin with, Asa Griffiths, the father, was one of those poorly integrated and correlated organisms, the product of an environment and a religious theory, but with no guiding or mental insight of his own, yet sensitive and therefore highly emotional and without any practical sense whatsoever. Indeed it would be hard to make clear just how life appealed to him, or what the true hue of his emotional responses was. On the other hand, as has been indicated, his wife was of a firmer texture but with scarcely any truer or more practical insight into anything.

The history of this man and his wife is of no particular interest here save as it affected their boy of twelve, Clyde Griffiths. This youth, aside from a certain emotionalism and exotic sense of romance which characterized him, and which he took more from his father than from his mother, brought a more vivid and intelligent imagination to things, and was constantly thinking of how he might better himself, if he had a chance; places to which he might go, things he might see, and how differently he might live, if only this, that and the other things were true.

The principal thing that troubled Clyde up to his fifteenth year, and for long after in retrospect, was that the calling or profession of his parents was the shabby thing that it appeared to be in the eyes of others. For so often throughout his youth in different cities in which his parents had conducted a mission or spoken on the streets — Grand Rapids, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, lastly Kansas City — it had been obvious that people, at least the boys and girls he encountered, looked down upon him and his brothers and sisters for being the children of such parents.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser: Summary & Themes

On several occasions, and much against the mood of his parents, who never countenanced such exhibitions of temper, he had stopped to fight with one or another of these boys. But always, beaten or victorious, he had been conscious of the fact that the work his parents did was not satisfactory to others — shabby, trivial.

And always he was thinking of what he would do, once he reached the place where he could get away. They did not understand the importance or the essential necessity for some form of practical or professional training for each and every one of their young ones. Instead, being wrapped up in the notion of evangelizing the world, they had neglected to keep their children in school in any one place. They had moved here and there, sometimes in the very midst of an advantageous school season, because of a larger and better religious field in which to work.

And there were times, when, the work proving highly unprofitable and Asa being unable to make much money at the two things he most understood — gardening and canvassing for one invention or another — they were quite without sufficient food or decent clothes, and the children could not go to school. In the face of such situations as these, whatever the children might think, Asa and his wife remained as optimistic as ever, or they insisted to themselves that they were, and had unwavering faith in the Lord and His intention to provide. The combination home and mission which this family occupied was dreary enough in most of its phases to discourage the average youth or girl of any spirit.

It consisted in its entirety of one long store floor in an old and decidedly colorless and inartistic wooden building which was situated in that part of Kansas City which lies north of Independence Boulevard and west of Troost Avenue, the exact street or place being called Bickel, a very short thoroughfare opening off Missouri Avenue, a somewhat more lengthy but no less nondescript highway.

And the entire neighborhood in which it stood was very faintly and yet not agreeably redolent of a commercial life which had long since moved farther south, if not west. It was some five blocks from the spot on which twice a week the open air meetings of these religious enthusiasts and proselytizers were held. And it was the ground floor of this building, looking out into Bickel Street at the front and some dreary back yards of equally dreary frame houses, which was divided at the front into a hall forty by twenty-five feet in size, in which had been placed some sixty collapsible wood chairs, a lectern, a map of Palestine or the Holy Land, and for wall decorations some twenty-five printed but unframed mottoes which read in part:.

The rear forty feet of this very commonplace floor was intricately and yet neatly divided into three small bedrooms, a living room which overlooked the backyard and wooden fences of yards no better than those at the back; also, a combination kitchen and dining room exactly ten feet square, and a store room for mission tracts, hymnals, boxes, trunks and whatever else of non-immediate use, but of assumed value, which the family owned.

This particular small room lay immediately to the rear of the mission hall itself, and into it before or after speaking or at such times as a conference seemed important, both Mr. Griffiths were wont to retire — also at times to meditate or pray. How often had Clyde and his sisters and younger brother seen his mother or father, or both, in conference with some derelict or semi-repentant soul who had come for advice or aid, most usually for aid.

And the whole neighborhood was so dreary and run-down that he hated the thought of living in it, let alone being part of a work that required constant appeals for aid, as well as constant prayer and thanksgiving to sustain it. Elvira Griffiths before she had married Asa had been nothing but an ignorant farm girl, brought up without much thought of religion of any kind. But having fallen in love with him, she had become inoculated with the virus of Evangelism and proselytizing which dominated him, and had followed him gladly and enthusiastically in all of his ventures and through all of his vagaries.

Occasionally a small band of people followed the preachers to their mission, or learning of its existence through their street work, appeared there later — those odd and mentally disturbed or distrait souls who are to be found in every place.

And always he had been more irritated than favorably influenced by the types of men and women who came here — mostly men — down-and-out laborers, loafers, drunkards, wastrels, the botched and helpless who seemed to drift in, because they had no other place to go. And they were always testifying as to how God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this or that predicament — never how they had rescued any one else.

That uncle — Samuel Griffiths by name — was rich. News of all this had apparently been brought west in some way by people who knew Asa and his father and brother. As Clyde pictured this uncle, he must be a kind of Croesus, living in ease and luxury there in the east, while here in the west — Kansas City — he and his parents and his brother and sisters were living in the same wretched and hum-drum, hand-to-mouth state that had always characterized their lives.

But for this — apart from anything he might do for himself, as he early began to see — there was no remedy. And it would be rather hard for him to overcome this handicap, seeing that other boys and girls with more money and better homes were being trained for special kinds of work.

How was one to get a start under such circumstances? Already when, at the age of thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, he began looking in the papers, which, being too worldly, had never been admitted to his home, he found that mostly skilled help was wanted, or boys to learn trades in which at the moment he was not very much interested. 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. For Clyde was as vain and proud as he was poor.

He was one of those interesting individuals who looked upon himself as a thing apart — never quite wholly and indissolubly merged with the family of which he was a member, and never with any profound obligations to those who had been responsible for his coming into the world. On the contrary, he was inclined to study his parents, not too sharply or bitterly, but with a very fair grasp of their qualities and capabilities. And yet, with so much judgment in that direction, he was never quite able — at least not until he had reached his sixteenth year — to formulate any policy in regard to himself, and then only in a rather fumbling and tentative way.

Incidentally by that time the sex lure or appeal had begun to manifest itself and he was already intensely interested and troubled by the beauty of the opposite sex, its attractions for him and his attraction for it. And, naturally and coincidentally, the matter of his clothes and his physical appearance had begun to trouble him not a little — how he looked and how other boys looked. It was painful to him now to think that his clothes were not right; that he was not as handsome as he might be, not as interesting.

What a wretched thing it was to be born poor and not to have any one to do anything for you and not to be able to do so very much for yourself! Casual examination of himself in mirrors whenever he found them tended rather to assure him that he was not so bad-looking — a straight, well-cut nose, high white forehead, wavy, glossy, black hair, eyes that were black and rather melancholy at times. And yet the fact that his family was the unhappy thing that it was, that he had never had any real friends, and could not have any, as he saw it, because of the work and connection of his parents, was now tending more and more to induce a kind of mental depression or melancholia which promised not so well for his future.

It served to make him rebellious and hence lethargic at times. Because of his parents, and in spite of his looks, which were really agreeable and more appealing than most, he was inclined to misinterpret the interested looks which were cast at him occasionally by young girls in very different walks of life from him — the contemptuous and yet rather inviting way in which they looked to see if he were interested or disinterested, brave or cowardly. And yet, before he had ever earned any money at all, he had always told himself that if only he had a better collar, a nicer shirt, finer shoes, a good suit, a swell overcoat like some boys had!

Oh, the fine clothes, the handsome homes, the watches, rings, pins that some boys sported; the dandies many youths of his years already were! Some parents of boys of his years actually gave them cars of their own to ride in. They were to be seen upon the principal streets of Kansas City flitting to and fro like flies. And pretty girls with them. And he had nothing. And he never had had. And yet the world was so full of so many things to do — so many people were so happy and so successful.

What was he to do? Which way to turn? What one thing to take up and master — something that would get him somewhere. He could not say. He did not know exactly. And these peculiar parents were in no way sufficiently equipped to advise him. The truth in regard to Esta was that in spite of her guarded up- bringing, and the seeming religious and moral fervor which at times appeared to characterize her, she was just a sensuous, weak girl who did not by any means know yet what she thought. Despite the atmosphere in which she moved, essentially she was not of it. Like the large majority of those who profess and daily repeat the dogmas and creeds of the world, she had come into her practices and imagined attitude so insensibly from her earliest childhood on, that up to this time, and even later, she did not know the meaning of it all.

Once they did, however, it was a foregone conclusion that her religious notions, not being grounded on any conviction or temperamental bias of her own, were not likely to withstand the shock. So that all the while, and not unlike her brother Clyde, her thoughts as well as her emotions were wandering here and there — to love, to comfort — to things which in the main had little, if anything, to do with any self-abnegating and self-immolating religious theory.

Within her was a chemism of dreams which somehow counteracted all they had to say. She was in the main a drifter, with a vague yearning toward pretty dresses, hats, shoes, ribbons and the like, and super-imposed above this, the religious theory or notion that she should not be. There were the long bright streets of a morning and afternoon after school or of an evening.

The charm of certain girls swinging along together, arms locked, secrets a-whispering, or that of boys, clownish, yet revealing through their bounding ridiculous animality the force and meaning of that chemistry and urge toward mating which lies back of all youthful thought and action.

And in herself, as from time to time she observed lovers or flirtation-seekers who lingered at street corners or about doorways, and who looked at her in a longing and seeking way, there was a stirring, a nerve plasm palpitation that spoke loudly for all the seemingly material things of life, not for the thin pleasantries of heaven. And the glances drilled her like an invisible ray, for she was pleasing to look at and was growing more attractive hourly. And the moods in others awakened responsive moods in her, those rearranging chemisms upon which all the morality or immorality of the world is based.

And there was little to stay her, for she was essentially yielding, if not amorous. Yet so great had been her home drilling as to the need of modesty, circumspection, purity and the like, that on this occasion at least there was no danger of any immediate lapse. Only this attack once made, others followed, were accepted, or not so quickly fled from, and by degrees, these served to break down that wall of reserve which her home training had served to erect. She became secretive and hid her ways from her parents. Youths occasionally walked and talked with her in spite of herself.

They demolished that excessive shyness which had been hers, and which had served to put others aside for a time at least. She wished for other contacts — dreamed of some bright, gay, wonderful love of some kind, with some one. Finally, after a slow but vigorous internal growth of mood and desire, there came this actor, one of those vain, handsome, animal personalities, all clothes and airs, but no morals no taste, no courtesy or real tenderness even , but of compelling magnetism, who was able within the space of one brief week and a few meetings to completely befuddle and enmesh her so that she was really his to do with as he wished.

And the truth was that he scarcely cared for her at all. To him, dull as he was, she was just another girl — fairly pretty, obviously sensuous and inexperienced, a silly who could be taken by a few soft words — a show of seemingly sincere affection, talk of the opportunity of a broader, freer life on the road, in other great cities, as his wife. And yet his words were those of a lover who would be true forever. All she had to do, as he explained to her, was to come away with him and be his bride, at once — now.

Delay was so vain when two such as they had met. There was difficulty about marriage here, which he could not explain — it related to friends — but in St. Louis he had a preacher friend who would wed them. She was to have new and better clothes than she had ever known, delicious adventures, love. She would travel with him and see the great world. She would never need to trouble more about anything save him; and while it was truth to her — the verbal surety of a genuine passion — to him it was the most ancient and serviceable type of blarney, often used before and often successful.

In a single week then, at odd hours, morning, afternoon and night, this chemic witchery was accomplished. Coming home rather late one Saturday night in April from a walk which he had taken about the business heart, in order to escape the regular Saturday night mission services, Clyde found his mother and father worried about the whereabouts of Esta. She had played and sung as usual at this meeting. And all had seemed all right with her. After the meeting she had gone to her room, saying that she was not feeling very well and was going to bed early. Then the house search proving that she was not there, Asa had gone outside to look up and down the street.

She sometimes walked out alone, or sat or stood in front of the mission during its idle or closed hours. This search revealing nothing, Clyde and he had walked to a corner, then along Missouri Avenue. At twelve they returned and after that, naturally, the curiosity in regard to her grew momentarily sharper. At first they assumed that she might have taken an unexplained walk somewhere, but as twelve-thirty, and finally one, and one-thirty, passed, and no Esta, they were about to notify the police, when Clyde, going into her room, saw a note pinned to the pillow of her small wooden bed — a missive that had escaped the eye of his mother.

At once he went to it, curious and comprehending, for he had often wondered in what way, assuming that he ever wished to depart surreptitiously, he would notify his parents, for he knew they would never countenance his departure unless they were permitted to supervise it in every detail. And now here was Esta missing, and here was undoubtedly some such communication as he might have left.

He picked it up, eager to read it, but at that moment his mother came into the room and, seeing it in his hand, exclaimed: Is it from her? He noted that her strong broad face, always tanned a reddish brown, blanched as she turned away toward the outer room. Her biggish mouth was now set in a firm, straight line. Her large, strong hand shook the least bit as it held the small note aloft. Clyde, who had followed, saw him take it a little nervously in his pudgy hands, his lips, always weak and beginning to crinkle at the center with age, now working curiously.

Always the more impressive, Mrs. Griffiths now showed herself markedly different and more vital in this trying situation, a kind of irritation or dissatisfaction with life itself, along with an obvious physical distress, seeming to pass through her like a visible shadow. Once her husband had gotten up, she reached out and took the note, then merely glared at it again, her face set in hard yet stricken and disturbing lines.

Her manner was that of one who is intensely disquieted and dissatisfied, one who fingers savagely at a material knot and yet cannot undo it, one who seeks restraint and freedom from complaint and yet who would complain bitterly, angrily. For behind her were all those years of religious work and faith, which somehow, in her poorly integrated conscience, seemed dimly to indicate that she should justly have been spared this. Where was her God, her Christ, at this hour when this obvious evil was being done?

Why had He not acted for her? How was He to explain this? In the face of so great a calamity, it was very hard for her, as Clyde could see, to get this straightened out, instantly at least. Although, as Clyde had come to know, it could be done eventually, of course. For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control.

Instead she retreated a step and reexamined the letter, almost angrily, then said to Asa: You children had better go on to bed. With Asa then she retired quite precipitately to a small room back of the mission hall. They heard her click the electric bulb. Then their voices were heard in low converse, while Clyde and Julia and Frank looked at each other, although Frank, being so young — only ten — could scarcely be said to have comprehended fully.

Even Julia hardly gathered the full import of it. Esta had tired of all this, as had he. Perhaps there was some one, like one of those dandies whom he saw on the streets with the prettiest girls, with whom she had gone. And what was he like? That note told something, and yet his mother had not let him see it. She had taken it away too quickly. If only he had looked first, silently and to himself! Julia, being colder emotionally than either Esta or Clyde, was more considerate of her parents in a conventional way, and hence sorrier. True, she did not quite gather what it meant, but she suspected something, for she had talked occasionally with girls, but in a very guarded and conservative way.

Now, however, it was more the way in which Esta had chosen to leave, deserting her parents and her brothers and herself, that caused her to be angry with her, for why should she go and do anything which would distress her parents in this dreadful fashion. The air was thick with misery. And as his parents talked in their little room, Clyde brooded too, for he was intensely curious about life now. What was it Esta had really done?

Was it, as he feared and thought, one of those dreadful runaway or sexually disagreeable affairs which the boys on the streets and at school were always slyly talking about? How shameful, if that were true! She might never come back. She had gone with some man. There was something wrong about that, no doubt, for a girl, anyhow, for all he had ever heard was that all decent contacts between boys and girls, men and women, led to but one thing — marriage.

And now Esta, in addition to their other troubles, had gone and done this. Certainly this home life of theirs was pretty dark now, and it would be darker instead of brighter because of this. Presently the parents came out, and then Mrs. She has chosen to go her own way, for a time, for some reason.

She must see something of the world for herself, I suppose. But we can forgive her. Our hearts must be kept open, soft and tender. We can only pray now, and hope, morning, noon and night, that no evil will befall her. Apart from his own misery, he seemed only to note and be impressed by the more significant misery of his wife. During all this, he had stood foolishly to one side — short, gray, frizzled, inadequate.

We must only hope for the best. Praise the Lord — we must praise the Lord! So we must not say or do anything that will injure her until we know. Griffiths paused and looked firmly and yet apologetically at her children. Where was she now — at this minute? On some train somewhere? She was probably dissatisfied, just as he was.

Here he was, thinking so recently of going away somewhere himself, wondering how the family would take it, and now she had gone before him. How would that affect his point of view and action in the future? It was only another something which hinted that things were not right here. Mission work was nothing. All this religious emotion and talk was not so much either. The effect of this particular conclusion was to cause Clyde to think harder than ever about himself. And the principal result of his thinking was that he must do something for himself and soon.

Up to this time the best he had been able to do was to work at such odd jobs as befall all boys between their twelfth and fifteenth years: He felt himself rich and, in the face of the opposition of his parents, who were opposed to the theater and motion pictures also, as being not only worldly, but sinful, he could occasionally go to one or another of those — in the gallery — a form of diversion which he had to conceal from his parents. Yet that did not deter him. He felt that he had a right to go with his own money; also to take his younger brother Frank, who was glad enough to go with him and say nothing.

Later in the same year, wishing to get out of school because he already felt himself very much belated in the race, he secured a place as an assistant to a soda water clerk in one of the cheaper drug stores of the city, which adjoined a theater and enjoyed not a little patronage of this sort.

Later, in conversation with the young man whose assistant he was to be, and from whom he was to learn the trade, assuming that he was sufficiently willing and facile, he gathered that if he mastered this art, he might make as much as fifteen and even eighteen dollars a week. The particular store to which he was applying paid only twelve, the standard salary of most places. But to acquire this art, as he was now informed, required time and the friendly help of an expert. If he wished to come here and work for five to begin with — well, six, then, since his face fell — he might soon expect to know a great deal about the art of mixing sweet drinks and decorating a large variety of ice creams with liquid sweets, thus turning them into sundaes.

For the time being apprenticeship meant washing and polishing all the machinery and implements of this particular counter, to say nothing of opening and sweeping out the store at so early an hour as seven-thirty, dusting, and delivering such orders as the owner of this drug store chose to send out by him. At such idle moments as his immediate superior — a Mr.

Sieberling — twenty, dashing, self-confident, talkative, was too busy to fill all the orders, he might be called upon to mix such minor drinks — lemonades, Coca—Colas and the like — as the trade demanded. Yet this interesting position, after due consultation with his mother, he decided to take. For one thing, it would provide him, as he suspected, with all the ice-cream sodas he desired, free — an advantage not to be disregarded.

In the next place, as he saw it at the time, it was an open door to a trade — something which he lacked. They could not ask him to attend any meetings save on Sunday, and not even then, since he was supposed to work Sunday afternoons and evenings. Next, the clerk who manipulated this particular soda fountain, quite regularly received passes from the manager of the theater next door, and into the lobby of which one door to the drug store gave — a most fascinating connection to Clyde. It seemed so interesting to be working for a drug store thus intimately connected with a theater.

And best of all, as Clyde now found to his pleasure, and yet despair at times, the place was visited, just before and after the show on matinee days, by bevies of girls, single and en suite, who sat at the counter and giggled and chattered and gave their hair and their complexions last perfecting touches before the mirror. And Clyde, callow and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and those of the opposite sex, was never weary of observing the beauty, the daring, the self-sufficiency and the sweetness of these, as he saw them. For the first time in his life, while he busied himself with washing glasses, filling the ice-cream and syrup containers, arranging the lemons and oranges in the trays, he had an almost uninterrupted opportunity of studying these girls at close range.

The wonder of them! For the most part, they were so well-dressed and smart-looking — the rings, pins, furs, delightful hats, pretty shoes they wore. And so often he overheard them discussing such interesting things — parties, dances, dinners, the shows they had seen, the places in or near Kansas City to which they were soon going, the difference between the styles of this year and last, the fascination of certain actors and actresses — principally actors — who were now playing or soon coming to the city. And to this day, in his own home he had heard nothing of all this.

And very often one or another of these young beauties was accompanied by some male in evening suit, dress shirt, high hat, bow tie, white kid gloves and patent leather shoes, a costume which at that time Clyde felt to be the last word in all true distinction, beauty, gallantry and bliss. To be able to wear such a suit with such ease and air!

To be able to talk to a girl after the manner and with the sang-froid of some of these gallants! No good-looking girl, as it then appeared to him, would have anything to do with him if he did not possess this standard of equipment. It was plainly necessary — the thing.

And once he did attain it — was able to wear such clothes as these — well, then was he not well set upon the path that leads to all the blisses? All the joys of life would then most certainly be spread before him. The secret handclasps, maybe — an arm about the waist of some one or another — a kiss — a promise of marriage — and then, and then! And all this as a revealing flash after all the years of walking through the streets with his father and mother to public prayer meeting, the sitting in chapel and listening to queer and nondescript individuals — depressing and disconcerting people — telling how Christ had saved them and what God had done for them.

You bet he would get out of that now. He would work and save his money and be somebody. Decidedly this simple and yet idyllic compound of the commonplace had all the luster and wonder of a spiritual transfiguration, the true mirage of the lost and thirsting and seeking victim of the desert. However, the trouble with this particular position, as time speedily proved, was that much as it might teach him of mixing drinks and how to eventually earn twelve dollars a week, it was no immediate solvent for the yearnings and ambitions that were already gnawing at his vitals.

For Albert Sieberling, his immediate superior, was determined to keep as much of his knowledge, as well as the most pleasant parts of the tasks, to himself. And further he was quite at one with the druggist for whom they worked in thinking that Clyde, in addition to assisting him about the fountain, should run such errands as the druggist desired, which kept Clyde industriously employed for nearly all the hours he was on duty.

Consequently there was no immediate result to all this. Clyde could see no way to dressing better than he did. Worse, he was haunted by the fact that he had very little money and very few contacts and connections — so few that, outside his own home, he was lonely and not so very much less than lonely there.

The flight of Esta had thrown a chill over the religious work there, and because, as yet, she had not returned — the family, as he now heard, was thinking of breaking up here and moving, for want of a better idea, to Denver, Colorado. But Clyde, by now, was convinced that he did not wish to accompany them. What was the good of it, he asked himself? There would be just another mission there, the same as this one. He had always lived at home — in the rooms at the rear of the mission in Bickel Street, but he hated it. And since his eleventh year, during all of which time his family had been residing in Kansas City, he had been ashamed to bring boy friends to or near it.

For that reason he had always avoided boy friends, and had walked and played very much alone — or with his brother and sisters. But now that he was sixteen and old enough to make his own way, he ought to be getting out of this. And yet he was earning almost nothing — not enough to live on, if he were alone — and he had not as yet developed sufficient skill or courage to get anything better. Nevertheless when his parents began to talk of moving to Denver, and suggested that he might secure work out there, never assuming for a moment that he would not want to go he began to throw out hints to the effect that it might he better if he did not.

He liked Kansas City. What was the use of changing? He had a job now and he might get something better. But his parents, bethinking themselves of Esta and the fate that had overtaken her, were not a little dubious as to the outcome of such early adventuring on his part alone. Once they were away, where would he live? What sort of influence would enter his life, who would be at hand to aid and council and guide him in the straight and narrow path, as they had done? It was something to think about.

But spurred by this imminence of Denver, which now daily seemed to be drawing nearer, and the fact that not long after this Mr. Sieberling, owing to his too obvious gallantries in connection with the fair sex, lost his place in the drug store, and Clyde came by a new and bony and chill superior who did not seem to want him as an assistant, he decided to quit — not at once, but rather to see, on such errands as took him out of the store, if he could not find something else.

Incidentally in so doing, looking here and there, he one day thought he would speak to the manager of the fountain which was connected with the leading drug store in the principal hotel of the city — the latter a great twelve-story affair, which represented, as he saw it, the quintessence of luxury and ease.

Its windows were always so heavily curtained; the main entrance he had never ventured to look beyond that was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms. Often he had passed here, wondering with boyish curiosity what the nature of the life of such a place might be. Before its doors, so many taxis and automobiles were always in waiting.

To-day, being driven by the necessity of doing something for himself, he entered the drug store which occupied the principal corner, facing 14th Street at Baltimore, and finding a girl cashier in a small glass cage near the door, asked of her who was in charge of the soda fountain. Interested by his tentative and uncertain manner, as well as his deep and rather appealing eyes, and instinctively judging that he was looking for something to do, she observed: Secor, there, the manager of the store.

Clyde approached him, and being still very dubious as to how one went about getting anything in life, and finding him engrossed in what he was doing, stood first on one foot and then on the other, until at last, sensing some one was hovering about for something, the man turned: The captain of the boys was telling me he was in need of one. I should think that would be as good as helping about a soda fountain, any day. Just ask for Mr. Squires inside there, under the stairs, and he can tell you all about it. At the mere mention of work in connection with so imposing an institution as the Green—Davidson, and the possibility of his getting it, Clyde first stared, felt himself tremble the least bit with excitement, then thanking his advisor for his kindness, went direct to a green-marbled doorway which opened from the rear of this drug-store into the lobby of the hotel.

Once through it, he beheld a lobby, the like of which, for all his years but because of the timorous poverty that had restrained him from exploring such a world, was more arresting, quite, than anything he had seen before. It was all so lavish. Under his feet was a checkered black-and- white marble floor. Above him a coppered and stained and gilded ceiling.

And supporting this, a veritable forest of black marble columns as highly polished as the floor — glassy smooth. And between the columns which ranged away toward three separate entrances, one right, one left and one directly forward toward Dalrymple Avenue — were lamps, statuary, rugs, palms, chairs, divans, tete-a-tetes — a prodigal display. Its rooms and hall and lobbies and restaurants were entirely too richly furnished, without the saving grace of either simplicity or necessity. As Clyde stood, gazing about the lobby, he saw a large company of people — some women and children, but principally men as he could see — either walking or standing about and talking or idling in the chairs, side by side or alone.

There was a convention of dentists in the city, not a few of whom, with their wives and children, were gathered here; but to Clyde, who was not aware of this nor of the methods and meanings of conventions, this was the ordinary, everyday appearance of this hotel. And between these great flights was evidently the office of the hotel, for there were many clerks there. But behind the nearest flight, and close to the wall through which he had come, was a tall desk, at which stood a young man of about his own age in a maroon uniform bright with many brass buttons.

And on his head was a small, round, pill-box cap, which was cocked jauntily over one ear. He was busy making entries with a lead pencil in a book which lay open before him. Various other boys about his own age, and uniformed as he was, were seated upon a long bench near him, or were to be seen darting here and there, sometimes, returning to this one with a slip of paper or a key or note of some kind, and then seating themselves upon the bench to await another call apparently, which seemed to come swiftly enough.

Once called, they went hurrying up one or the other stairs or toward one of the several entrances or elevators, and almost invariably were to be seen escorting individuals whose bags and suitcases and overcoats and golf sticks they carried. There were others who disappeared and returned, carrying drinks on trays or some package or other, which they were taking to one of the rooms above. Plainly this was the work that he should be called upon to do, assuming that he would be so fortunate as to connect himself with such an institution as this.

And it was all so brisk and enlivening that he wished that he might be so fortunate as to secure a position here. But would he be? And where was Mr. He approached the youth at the small desk: Clyde gazed in the direction indicated, and saw approaching a brisk and dapper and decidedly sophisticated-looking person of perhaps twenty-nine or thirty years of age. He was so very slender, keen, hatchet-faced and well-dressed that Clyde was not only impressed but overawed at once — a very shrewd and cunning-looking person.

His nose was so long and thin, his eyes so sharp, his lips thin, and chin pointed. He just came in this morning with fourteen trunks and four servants. Can you beat it! Can you beat that English stuff? They can certainly lay on the class, eh? He turned for the first time, glimpsing Clyde, but paying no attention to him.

For the first time in his life, it occurred to him that if he wanted to get on he ought to insinuate himself into the good graces of people — do or say something that would make them like him. So now he contrived an eager, ingratiating smile, which he bestowed on Mr. The man before him merely looked at him coldly, but being the soul of craft and self-acquisitiveness in a petty way, and rather liking anybody who had the skill and the will to be diplomatic, he now put aside an impulse to shake his head negatively, and observed: Come around Monday afternoon.

Clyde, left alone in this fashion, and not knowing just what it meant, stared, wondering. Was it really true that he had been invited to come back on Monday? Could it be possible that — He turned and hurried out, thrilling from head to toe. He had asked this man for a place in the very finest hotel in Kansas City and he had asked him to come back and see him on Monday. Could it be possible that he would be admitted to such a grand world as this — and that so speedily?

Could it really be? The imaginative flights of Clyde in connection with all this — his dreams of what it might mean for him to be connected with so glorious an institution — can only be suggested. For his ideas of luxury were in the main so extreme and mistaken and gauche — mere wanderings of a repressed and unsatisfied fancy, which as yet had had nothing but imaginings to feed it. He went back to his old duties at the drug-store — to his home after hours in order to eat and sleep — but now for the balance of this Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday until late in the day, he walked on air, really.

There, at midnight even, before each of the three principal entrances — one facing each of three streets — was a doorman in a long maroon coat with many buttons and a high-rimmed and long-visored maroon cap. And inside, behind looped and fluted French silk curtains, were the still blazing lights, the a la carte dining-room and the American grill in the basement near one corner still open. And about them were many taxis and cars. And there was music always — from somewhere. After surveying it all this Friday night and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, he returned on Monday afternoon at the suggestion of Mr.

Squires and was greeted by that individual rather crustily, for by then he had all but forgotten him. But seeing that at the moment he was actually in need of help, and being satisfied that Clyde might be of service, he led him into his small office under the stair, where, with a very superior manner and much actual indifference, he proceeded to question him as to his parentage, where he lived, at what he had worked before and where, what his father did for a living — a poser that for Clyde, for he was proud and so ashamed to admit that his parents conducted a mission and preached on the streets.

Instead he replied which was true at times that his father canvassed for a washing machine and wringer company — and on Sundays preached — a religious revelation, which was not at all displeasing to this master of boys who were inclined to be anything but home-loving and conservative. Could he bring a reference from where he now was?

Squires proceeded to explain that this hotel was very strict. Too many boys, on account of the scenes and the show here, the contact made with undue luxury to which they were not accustomed — though these were not the words used by Mr. Squires — were inclined to lose their heads and go wrong. He must have boys who were willing, civil, prompt, courteous to everybody. They must be clean and neat about their persons and clothes and show up promptly — on the dot — and in good condition for the work every day.

He would be fired, and that promptly. He would not tolerate any nonsense. That must be understood now, once and for all. But, and this information came as a most amazing revelation to Clyde, every guest for whom any of these boys did anything — carried a bag or delivered a pitcher of water or did anything — gave him a tip, and often quite a liberal one — a dime, fifteen cents, a quarter, sometimes more.

And these tips, as Mr. Squires explained, taken all together, averaged from four to six dollars a day — not less and sometimes more — most amazing pay, as Clyde now realized. His heart gave an enormous bound and was near to suffocating him at the mere mention of so large a sum. From four to six dollars! Why, that was twenty-eight to forty-two dollars a week!

He could scarcely believe it. And that in addition to the fifteen dollars a month and board. And there was no charge, as Mr. Squires now explained, for the handsome uniforms the boys wore. But it might not be worn or taken out of the place. His hours, as Mr. Squires now proceeded to explain, would be as follows: On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, he was to work from six in the morning until noon, and then, with six hours off, from six in the evening until midnight.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, he need only work from noon until six, thus giving him each alternate afternoon or evening to himself. But all his meals were to be taken outside his working hours and he was to report promptly in uniform for line-up and inspection by his superior exactly ten minutes before the regular hours of his work began at each watch. As for some other things which were in his mind at the time, Mr.

There were others, as he knew, who would speak for him. Instead he went on to add, and then quite climactically for Clyde at that time, who had been sitting as one in a daze: I think the one Silsbee wore ought to be about right for him. Then he turned to his assistant at the desk who was at the moment looking on.

In the meantime, Clyde, in tow of this new mentor, was listening to a line of information such as never previously had come to his ears anywhere. He was tall, vigorous, sandy- haired, freckled, genial and voluble. Yu get dat, do you? Dey like you to be quick around here, see. After dat all de rest is yours.

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A part of his twenty-four or thirty-two dollars as he figured it was going glimmering, apparently — eleven or twelve all told — but what of it! Would there not be twelve or fifteen or even more left? And there were his meals and his uniform. What a realization of paradise!

What a consummation of luxury! Hegglund of Jersey City escorted him to the twelfth floor and into a room where they found on guard a wizened and grizzled little old man of doubtful age and temperament, who forthwith ouffitted Clyde with a suit that was so near a fit that, without further orders, it was not deemed necessary to alter it. Better get it clipped behind. His hair certainly did not look right in the new cap. He hated it now.

And going downstairs, and reporting to Mr. It fits all right, does it? Well, then, you go on here at six. Report at five-thirty and be here in your uniform at five-forty-five for inspection. Whereupon Clyde, being advised by Hegglund to go then and there to get his uniform and take it to the dressing-room in the basement, and get his locker from the locker-man, he did so, and then hurried most nervously out — first to get a hair-cut and afterwards to report to his family on his great luck.

He was to be a bell-boy in the great Hotel Green—Davidson. He was to wear a uniform and a handsome one. He was to make — but he did not tell his mother at first what he was to make, truly — but more than eleven or twelve at first, anyhow, he guessed — he could not be sure.

For now, all at once, he saw economic independence ahead for himself, if not for his family, and he did not care to complicate it with any claims which a confession as to his real salary would most certainly inspire. But he did say that he was to have his meals free — because that meant eating away from home, which was what he wished.

And in addition he was to live and move always in the glorious atmosphere of this hotel — not to have to go home ever before twelve, if he did not wish — to have good clothes — interesting company, maybe — a good time, gee! And as he hurried on about his various errands now, it occurred to him as a final and shrewd and delicious thought that he need not go home on such nights as he wished to go to a theater or anything like that.

He could just stay down-town and say he had to work. And that with free meals and good clothes — think of that! The mere thought of all this was so astonishing and entrancing that he could not bring himself to think of it too much. He must wait and see. He must wait and see just how much he would make here in this perfectly marvelous-marvelous realm.

And as conditions stood, the extraordinary economic and social inexperience of the Griffiths — Asa and Elvira — dovetailed all too neatly with his dreams. For neither Asa nor Elvira had the least knowledge of the actual character of the work upon which he was about to enter, scarcely any more than he did, or what it might mean to him morally, imaginatively, financially, or in any other way. For neither of them had ever stopped in a hotel above the fourth class in all their days.

Neither one had ever eaten in a restaurant of a class that catered to other than individuals of their own low financial level. And in view of this, Mrs. To be sure, he had already suggested that it might lead to some superior position in the hotel, some clerkship or other, but he did not know when that would be, and the other had promised rather definite fulfillment somewhat earlier — as to money, anyhow. But seeing him rush in on Monday afternoon and announce that he had secured the place and that forthwith he must change his tie and collar and get his hair cut and go back and report, she felt better about it.

For never before had she seen him so enthusiastic about anything, and it was something to have him more content with himself — not so moody, as he was at times. Yet, the hours which he began to maintain now — from six in the morning until midnight — with only an occasional early return on such evenings as he chose to come home when he was not working — and when he troubled to explain that he had been let off a little early — together with a certain eager and restless manner — a desire to be out and away from his home at nearly all such moments as he was not in bed or dressing or undressing, puzzled his mother and Asa, also.

He must always hurry off to the hotel, and all that he had to report was that he liked it ever so much, and that he was doing all right, he thought. And all the time the Griffiths — father and mother — were feeling that because of the affair in connection with Esta, they should really be moving away from Kansas City — should go to Denver.

And now more than ever, Clyde was insisting that he did not want to leave Kansas City. They might go, but he had a pretty good job now and wanted to stick to it. And if they left, he could get a room somewhere — and would be all right — a thought which did not appeal to them at all. Beginning with that first evening, when at 5: Whipple, his immediate superior, and was approved — not only because of the fit of his new uniform, but for his general appearance — the world for him had changed entirely.

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

Whipple, the squad of eight marched at the stroke of six through a door that gave into the lobby on the other side of the staircase from where stood Mr. Barnes, who alternated with Mr. A mysterious and yet sacred vision — a tip! Clyde, steadily moving up along the bench and adjoining Hegglund, who had been detailed to instruct him a little, was all eyes and ears and nerves.

He was so tense that he could hardly breathe, and fidgeted and jerked until finally Hegglund exclaimed: Just hold your horses will yuh? Clyde was scarcely able to keep his mind on what Hegglund was saying. A sixth boy had gone without a word to supply some order in that direction. And Clyde was number one. And number four was already seating himself again by his side — but looking shrewdly around to see if anybody was wanted anywhere. Clyde was up and before him, grateful that it was no one coming in with bags, but worried for fear it might be something that he would not understand or could not do quickly.

Clyde hastened to cover his mistake. There being no one else on the elevator with them, the Negro elevator boy in charge of the car saluted him at once. Eight did you say? He was too nervous to think to ask the direction and now began looking at room numbers, only to decide after a moment that he was in the wrong corridor.