Originally published in 1925, ‘The American Tragedy’ was written by Theodore Dreiser, an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. It is the story of a weak-willed young man who is both a villain and a victim of the valueless, materialistic society around him. It was inspired by the true story of an early twentieth-century murder and adapted into a classic film under the title ‘A Place in the Sun’.
Ambitious, but ill-educated, naïve, and immature, Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. 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 of a new life.
“Dreiser is widely regarded as 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
