An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser tells the tale of a weak-willed young man who is both the antagonist and the victim of the meaningless, consumerist world around him. An American Tragedy follows Clyde Griffiths as he is attracted to a group of wealthy acquaintances despite his own poverty-stricken past. It was based on the true event of a murder that occurred in the early twentieth century and was made into the classic movie A Place in the Sun. Clyde discovers that his new life leads him into a tragedy brought on by irresponsibility as he abandons his family's needs in favor of purchasing pricey gifts to impress a wealthy girl. But he still has an ambitious yearning for wealth and power that would lead to his demise. "Dreiser is recognized as one of the strongest of the novelists who have written about America as a business civilization. No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions.”—The New Yorker