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Carrie Meeber as an eighteen-year-old girl from Columbia City had never worked in a big city like Chicago. She was a poor, unsophisticated and emotional girl who had too many wonderful imagination of Chicago. Her illusion about the society and her traditional value led her to struggle on the edge of poverty. Poverty is a tragedy. It can be said that Carrie’s degeneration is the product of poverty.
2.1 Carrie’s weak relationship
As Carrie was born in a poor family in the countryside, she had less opportunity to make friends with rich people in the city. The only people she knew in Chicago was her sister. But her sister’s family were also short of money and could not supply her any better work opportunity. What her brother-in-law concerned was money not her plight. As no one could help Carrie in the big city, she had to find a job to support herself. Her weak relationship in Chicago caused her to struggle on the edge of poverty in the future.
2.2 Carrie’s simple character
Before Carrie came to Chicago, she lived in a peaceful and harmonious village, which created her simple character. At the beginning, Carrie was unsophisticated girl who was interested in everything in life. Carrie’s rich imagination and condition-influenced ignorance and innocence made her lack of guile and rapacity. She simply viewed that Chicago was paved with wealth and everyone had chances to get rich in this cosmopolitan city. She innocently dreamed to seek fortune and enjoy the comfort of the city. Her simplicity made her to image the world in a wonderful way. She could not clearly recognize the cruel reality, which led to her struggle on the edge of poverty.
2.3 Carrie’s traditional value
Carrie kept the traditional value that she would own what she wanted by hard and honest work. Her traditional value caused her to struggle on the edge of poverty in the future. Carrie began her job-hunting in Chicago. During this process, she was turned down again and again because of her lack of experience and knowledge. Although finally she found a job at a shoe factory, she was still disappointed. The work was extremely heavy. After work for ten hours a day, she nearly fell down. The salary was too low. A day’s hard work even could not meet her primary demands for survival. She had realized how many difficulties she had to overcome before she could establish a place for herself in this city. Even worse, because of her illness, she lost her job. In the desperate hopes of finding new employment, she only became frustrated and disappointed when nothing was available. The cruel reality mercilessly broke her dream of getting rich in a decent way. The way of getting rich by hard work was proved totally unfit and impractical for a girl like Carrie.
3 The Internal Causes of Carrie’s Degeneration
Carrie was born in a poor family in which the relationships between family members depended on money and material. Her family and her friends did not give her right moral education, and just told her wrong money concept. Under the influence of her wrong view about the world and her defective characters, Carrie finally degenerated.