Nobody has much luck in Naturalist novels. His mother tries to get him off of death row, by appealing to churches.

Besides if she had remained at home, as a good mother should, and devoted herself to her son, as well as to her other children-their care and education-would this-have happened?Ĭlyde, the protagonist of An American Tragedy, has been convicted of murdering his lover. Both novels present a portrait of what it meant to be an American in the early part of the 20th century, but in reading one can be forgiven for supposing that each takes places in entirely different countries. For as all, but more particularly the ministers of the region, since they most guardedly and reservedly represented their congregations in every instance, unanimously saw it, here was a notorious and, of course, most unsavory trial which had resulted in a conviction with which the more conservative element of the country-if one could judge by the papers at least, were in agreement.īesides who was this woman-as well as her son? An exhorter-a secret preacher-one, who in defiance of all the tenets and processes of organized and historic, as well as hieratic, religious powers and forms (theological seminaries, organized churches and their affiliations and product-all carefully and advisedly and legitimately because historically and dogmatically interpreting the word of God) choosing to walk forth and without ordination after any fashion conduct an unauthorized and hence nondescript mission. Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy was published the very same year as F. For in the matter of her appeal to the churches and the public-as most wearily (and in secret if not to Clyde)-and after three weeks of more or less regional and purely sectarian trying, she was compelled to report the Christians at least were very indifferent-not as Christian as they should be. Except for a weekly visit from his mother, who, once she was entered upon her work, found it difficult to see him more often than that-traveling as she did in the next two months between Albany and Buffalo and even New York City-but without the success she had at first hoped for.

But after this the long days in prison for Clyde.

An american tragedy by theodore dreiser