An American Tragedy by Theodore Dressier | Characters, Summary, Analysis
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Theodore Dressier was a naturalist who expressed the stark truths of society in his novels in an as honest manner as possible. We have seen how he criticized the fraudulent idea of the American dream in Sister Carrie. Another noteworthy novel was An American Tragedy which was published in 1925.
An American Tragedy is also based on the faultiness of the American dream. An American Tragedy is considered a crime thriller as the story of this novel was inspired by a true criminal act that happened in 1906 at Big Moose Lake, New York. Grace Brown, a 20-year-old young pregnant girl was murdered by drowning by her own lover as he wanted to get rid of the girl to marry someone else. Dressier closely studied the case and adopted it in his novel. The main culprit of the Big Moose Lake Case was Chester Gillette who was executed by electrocution. The main character of An American Tragedy is Clyde Griffiths, the initials of the real criminal and that of the novel are the same (C.G.).
An American Tragedy is a true tragedy in the strict sense. Clyde meets an ignominious and dreadful end as a result of his innate moral weaknesses, physical cowardice, lack of self-discipline, immature intellect, unfocused ambition, and an ingratiating soft social mannerism.
Characters of An American Tragedy
Clyde Griffiths is the eldest son of Asa and Elvira Griffiths, a devoted Evangelist couple spreading Christianity in Kansas City during the early 1920s. Esta, Julia, and Frank Griffiths are his siblings. Samuel Griffiths is the paternal uncle of Clyde who is a rich businessman in New York. Hortense Briggs is a self-obsessed socialite to whom Clyde gets infatuated. Sparser is a fellow bellhop of Clyde working in the same hotel. Ratterer is another friend of Clyde who helps him in Chicago.
Gilbert Griffiths is Clyde’s cousin, Samuel Griffiths’ son. Roberta Alden is an innocent farm girl who falls in love with Clyde. Sondra Finchley is a young rich girl, daughter of another factory owner of New York.
Summary of An American Tragedy
Clyde Griffiths is the eldest son of an Evangelical couple working in Kansas City. Asa Griffiths and Elvira Griffith have four children. Esta, Julia, and Frank Griffith are siblings of Clyde. Asa and Elvira are satisfied with their religious work but the family suffers poverty and Asa often fails to meet two times meal. Obviously, the kids fail to get any proper education. Asa often tells stories about his younger brother Samuel Griffiths who is a successful businessman established in Lycurgus (a fictional city in New York.) Clyde has a strong desire to meet his rich uncle and somehow learn how to make money. As Clyde grows, he starts working to help his family. He starts working as a soda-jerk in a local soda shop. He finds that as a soda-jerk, he cannot earn much. When he sees his customers visiting the soda shop in stylish rich suits and accessories, he dreams of becoming rich like them someday. Soon he changes his job and becomes a Bellhop and messenger at hotel Green-Davidson. As a bellhop, he earns a good salary and he also gets occasional tips from customers. Now he is making as much money in a day that he used to earn in a week as a soda-jerk. However, he doesn’t give any extra money to his family. Rather he uses the extra income to buy new clothes and to save some funds.
At the hotel, Clyde makes friendship with other bellhops and one of them is Sparser. One day Sparser takes Clyde to a party to have fun. At the party, Clyde meets Hortense Briggs, a self-obsessed socialite who is looking for someone to spend money on her. Clyde gets enamored by her and she decides to use him for her financial needs. From the party, Sparser takes Clyde to a brothel and this opens a new world for Clyde. Clyde is too much attracted towards high-class girls whom he calls “electrifying”.
A few months ago, Clyde’s sister Esta eloped with her lover. Clyde comes to know that Esta has returned home. She is now pregnant and abandoned by the man who promised to marry her. Clyde’s mother asks for some monetary help to treat Esta. Clyde is sorry for her sister but before he could decide to help her financially, Hortense meets him and asks him to buy her a costly fashionable jacket. Clyde decides to buy the jacket. He writes a letter to his mother and informs her that he doesn’t have any money to help Esta.
Clyde is now completely in the grip of Hortense Briggs. One day Sparser, Clyde, Hortense, and other friends decide to go on a pleasure trip. Sparser takes a car from the garage of a rich man for whom his father works, without his permission. While returning from the pleasure trip, Sparser drives the car recklessly and they meet an accident. The driver and a girl in the other car suffer injuries but Sparser, Clyde, and others run away from the spot of the accident. The next day, Clyde learns that the girl died in that accident. Sparser is soon arrested for reckless driving and he tells the name of all who were with him on the trip. Fearing a jail term, Clyde decides to run away.
For three years, Clyde lives away from home under a false name. He continues to do petty jobs that offer very little money. One day, he meets his friend Ratterer who helps him and arranges for a job as a bellhop in Hotel Union Club in Chicago. Clyde is happy again as he starts earning good money. One day, he meets Samuel Griffiths who visited the hotel for a business meeting. When Samuel sees Clyde, he feels sorry that he didn’t take care of his brother and his family. He asks Clyde to come with him to Lycurgus New York. Samuel promises him a better job at his factory where they make collars.
Samuel’s son Gilbert is not too happy after meeting Clyde. Griffith is managing the factory and he offers Clyde a tough but low-paid job at a shop in the basement of the factory. Clyde rents a room at a cheap lodging house and starts working.
Clyde works laboriously and honestly. When Samuel asks Gilbert about the performance of Clyde, Gilbert offers some negative comments. However, Samuel observes Clyde himself and likes him. He invited Clyde to his home for dinner. At Samuel’s home, Clyde meets Sondra Finchley, a beautiful young girl of another rich businessman of Lycurgus. Gilbert doesn’t want Sondra to get close to Clyde but Sondra finds him amusing and attractive. Samuel asks Gilbert to arrange a better and higher-paying job for Clyde. Gilbert resists his father and says that Clyde is a clumsy worker, uneducated and purposeless. However, he accepts his father’s insistence and offers a better job to Clyde. However, Gilbert warns Clyde that he should not get sexually involved with any woman working under him. Clyde remains loyal and works honestly. Some young women workers of the factory try to approach Clyde but he maintains proper distance.
In the next month, the factory gets an extra-large order of collars. To fulfill the order, Clyde and Gilbert decide to appoint some new working girls. One of them is Roberta Alden, an innocent farm girl. Clyde finds her too attractive and couldn’t resist her. Roberta also falls in love with Clyde and they start dating. Clyde insists on sexual courtship but Roberta is too shy and traditional. One day, Sondra meets Clyde again and invites him to a night dance party. Roberta realizes that Clyde is now taking more interest in Sondra and she fears that she will lose her love. Ultimately, she decides to submit to Clyde’s demand and accepts sexual courtship with him.
However, Clyde continues to meet Sondra and soon he realizes that she is enough interested in him and he can have a chance to marry her. Thus, he decides to maintain his distance from Roberta. Roberta realizes what is happening but she could do nothing to stop it. One day, Roberta informs Clyde that she is pregnant. Roberta begs him to marry her or arrange for a doctor to abort the child. Clyde takes Roberta to a doctor who offers her some medicine to abort the child. However, the medicine doesn’t work. The doctor refuses to abort the child by other means.
Roberta insists Clyde marry her. Clyde promises to either find another doctor or marry her soon. Later on, he read the news about an accident at Pass Lake in which a man and a woman who took a boat were found drowned. Clyde decides to get rid of Roberta by feigning a simple accident at some deep lake. He invites Roberta to a trip to Big Bittern where he promises he will marry her. Roberta agrees.
At Big Bittern, Clyde and Roberta take a boat and Clyde takes her to an isolated place in an already deserted lake. However, before he could do anything, he feels very pensive and unable to act. Roberta realizes that something is wrong with him. She tries to approach him and touch him but he hits her and pushes her back. She loses balance and falls of the boat as the boat turns over. Pregnant and unable to swim, she asks Clyde to help her but he turns his ears and sees her drowning. He then comes back to the bank alone.
However, Roberta’s body is quickly found and Clyde is arrested for her murder. Clyde insists that she jumped off the boat by herself but nobody accepts his arguments. Samuel Griffiths is shocked when he comes to know about this. He tries to save Clyde by appointing two highly paid lawyers to argue for him. His lawyers do their best but couldn’t save Clyde who is sentenced to death by electrocution. Clyde used to describe beautiful girls as electrifying and in the end, he suffers electrocution.
In the jail, before his electrocution, Clyde contemplates his past actions and he reminisces how he ran away from the spot of accident in which that girl died in the car accident. He also remembers his younger sister Esta who was impregnated and abandoned by the man who promised to marry her. He realizes that his fate was always in front of his eyes, offering him to correct his ways. However, he failed to learn from life and hence suffered the consequences.
An American Tragedy was based on a true-crime story. In 2003, Jennifer Donnelly’s novel A Northern Light was published which was also based on the same story of Grace Brown Murder that happened in 1906. Grace Brown had written many love letters to Chester Gillette which were studied, observed, and used by Theodore Dressier and Jennifer Donnelly both for their respective novels.
This is it for today. We will continue to discuss American literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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