An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy

Dust jacket

 of a 1926 edition published by 

Boni & Liveright

Author

Theodore Dreiser

Country

US

Language

English

Genre

Crime fiction

 

Tragedy

Publisher

Boni & Liveright

Publication date

December 17, 1925

Dewey Decimal

813.52

Plot

---

the car. Everyone but Sparser and his partner flee the scene of the crime. Clyde leaves Kansas

City, fearing prosecution as an accessory to Sparser's crimes.

While working as a bellboy at an exclusive club in 

Chicago

, he meets his wealthy uncle Samuel

Griffiths, the owner of a shirt-collar factory in the fictional city of Lycurgus, New York. Samuel,

feeling guilt for neglecting his poor relations, offers Clyde a menial job at the factory. After that,

he promotes Clyde to a minor supervisory role.

Samuel Griffiths's son Gilbert, Clyde's immediate supervisor, warns Clyde that as a manager, he

should not consort with women working under his supervision. At the same time the Griffithses

pay Clyde little attention socially. As Clyde has no close friends in Lycurgus, he becomes lonely.

Emotionally vulnerable, Clyde is drawn to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working in

his shop, who falls in love with him. Clyde secretly courts Roberta, ultimately getting her

pregnant.

At the same time, elegant young socialite Sondra Finchley, daughter of another Lycurgus factory

owner, takes an interest in Clyde despite his cousin Gilbert's efforts to keep them apart. Clyde's

engaging manner makes him popular among the young smart set of Lycurgus; he and Sondra

become close, and he courts her while neglecting Roberta. Roberta expects Clyde to marry her

to avert the shame of an unwed pregnancy, but Clyde now dreams instead of marrying Sondra.

Having failed to procure an abortion for Roberta, Clyde gives her no more than desultory help

with living expenses while his relationship with Sondra matures. When Roberta threatens to

reveal her relationship with Clyde unless he marries her, he plans to murder her by drowning

while they go boating. He had read a local newspaper report of a boating accident.

Clyde takes Roberta out in a canoe on the fictional Big Bittern Lake (modeled on 

Big Moose

Lake

, New York) in the 

Adirondacks

, and rows to a secluded bay. He freezes. Sensing something

wrong, Roberta moves toward him, and he unintentionally strikes her in the face with a camera,

stunning her and accidentally capsizing the boat. Roberta, unable to swim, drowns, while Clyde,

unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative implies that the blow was accidental, but the

trail of circumstantial evidence left by the panicky and guilt-ridden Clyde points to murder.

The local authorities are eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional

evidence against him, and he repeatedly incriminates himself with his confused and

contradictory testimony. Despite a vigorous (and untruthful) defense by two lawyers hired by his

uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and after an appeal is denied, he is 

executed

 by

electric chair

.

---

Dreiser based the book on a notorious criminal case. On July 11, 1906, resort owners found an

overturned boat and the body of 

Grace Brown

 at 

Big Moose Lake

 in the 

Adirondack Mountains

 of

Upstate New York

. 

Chester Gillette

 was put on trial, and convicted of killing Brown, though he

claimed that her death was a suicide. Gillette was executed by electric chair on March 30,

1908.

[2]

 The murder trial drew international attention when Brown's love letters to Gillette were

read in court. Dreiser saved newspaper clippings about the case for several years before writing

his novel, during which he studied the case closely. He based Clyde Griffiths on Chester Gillette,

deliberately giving him the same initials.

The historical location of most of the central events was 

Cortland, New York

, a city situated in

Cortland County

 in a region replete with place names resonant of Greco-Roman history.

Townships include Homer, Solon, Virgil, Marathon, and Cincinnatus. 

Lycurgus

, the pseudonym

given to Cortland, was the legendary law-giver of ancient 

Sparta

. Grace Brown, a farm girl from

the small town of South 

Otselic

 in adjacent 

Chenango County

, was the factory girl who was

Gillette's lover. The place where Grace was killed, Big Moose Lake, an actual place in the

Adirondacks, was called Big Bittern Lake in Dreiser's novel.

A strikingly similar murder took place in 

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

, in 1934, when Robert

Edwards clubbed Freda McKechnie, one of his two lovers, and placed her body in a lake. The

cases were so similar that the press at the time dubbed the Edwards/McKechnie murder "The

American Tragedy". Edwards was eventually found guilty, and also executed by electric chair.

[3]

The novel is a 

tragedy

, Clyde's destruction being the consequence of his 

innate weaknesses

:

moral and physical cowardice, lack of scruples and self-discipline, muddled intellect, and

unfocused ambition; additionally, the effect of his ingratiating (Dreiser uses the word "soft")

social manner places temptation in his way which he cannot resist.

[4]

This novel is full of symbolism, ranging from Clyde's grotesque description of the high gloomy

walls of the factory as an opportunity for success, symbolizing how it is all a mirage, to the

description of girls as "electrifying" to foreshadow Clyde's destination to the electric chair;

Dreiser transforms everyday mundane objects to symbols.

[5]

Dreiser sustains readers' interest in the lengthy novel (over 800 pages) by the accumulation of

detail, and by continually varying the "emotional distance" of his writing from Clyde and other

Influences and characteristics

---

characters, from detailed examination of their thoughts and motivations to dispassionate

reportage.

[6]

The novel has been adapted several times into other forms, and the storyline has been used, not

always attributed, as the basis for other works:

A first stage adaptation written by 

Patrick Kearney

 for 

Broadway

 premiered at the 

Longacre

Theatre

 in New York on October 11, 1926. In the cast was actress 

Miriam Hopkins

, who had

not yet started her film career.

[7]

Sergei Eisenstein

 prepared a screenplay in the late 1920s which he hoped to have produced by

Paramount or by 

Charlie Chaplin

 during Eisenstein's stay in Hollywood in 1930.