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3.1 The poor family background.5
3.2 Carrie’s defective characters..6
3.3 The lack of rational moral education....7
4 The External Causes of Carrie’s Degeneration.9
4.1 The calling of American Dream and its disillusionment....9
4.2 The influence of urban environment..10
4.3 The popularity of consumerism11
5 The Realistic Implication of Carrie’s Course of Struggle...13
5.1 The source of happiness-kinship, friendship and love13
5.2 Obeying the law of morality to get success..14
5.3 Enjoying what we possess now14
6 Conclusion....16
Bibliography....17 1 Introduction
Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 27, 1871. His gentle and devoted mother was illiterate; his German immigrant father was server and distant. He lived an unhappy childhood. The large family moved from house to house in Indiana dogged by poverty, insecurity and internal pision. At the age of 15, he started to earn a living by himself. Influenced by his older brothers and sisters, he left for Chicago alone---the same journey as sister Carrie experienced. In order to support himself he took great pains there and undertook many different jobs, such as a shop assistant, a laundryman, a journalist, a railway worker, a newspaper editor etc. So he knew the city very well. Theodore Dreiser, as an outstanding representative of naturalism, wrote novels depicting real-life subjects in a harsh light. In his fiction, Dreiser delt with social problems and characters who struggle to survive. His principal concern was conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success. He thought that human beings should have their own will and capacity for realization of idealism. Theodore Dreiser was considered by many as the leader of naturalism in American writing. And what’s more, Dreiser was also praised as “the greatest living realist” of the early twentieth century. He was a fine writer of naturalistic novels. He wrote a large number of works: Sister Carrie (1900), followed by Jennie Gerhardt (1911) and his Trilogy of Desire, The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914) and The Stoic. His other works include The Genius (1915), an autobiographical work; An American Tragedy (1925), his successful novel of identification of potency with money; and The Bulwark (1946).
Sister Carrie, on the basis of Dreiser’s real experience in Chicago, was Dreiser’s first novel. Sister Carrie is a novel about the rural girl Carrie who comes to Chicago to realize her American dream. Carrie is a beautiful rural girl, and she envies city life and wants to come into the upper-class society in order to escape from poverty so that she comes to Chicago to make a living. However, cruel reality destroys her dream because of unemployment and disease. In desperation, she has done a salesman ---- Drouet’s mistress, and later as a result of her greater desire she becomes the hotel manager--- Hurstwood’s mistress. After the elopement with Hurstwood to New York, she becomes a famous singer and actress that can get the upper-class society and realize her fantasy by chance finally with the beautiful voice and appearance. However, the so-called "upper-class social life" can give her nothing she wants actually. She feels that life is emptier and cannot find the true meaning of life, in the loneliness and desolation, she dreams of sitting in a rocking chair and watching a TV that is not the life of happiness.
This paper will analyze the main external and internal factors that lead to Carrie’s tragedy, and the lessons we can learn from her tragedy. The external causes include Carrie’s defective characters, poor family background, and her lack of moral education. The internal causes include influence of the urban environment, the popularity of consumerism, and calling of American dream and its disillusion.
2 Reasons for Carrie to Struggle on the Edge of Poverty