An American Tragedy

by Theodore Dreiser

What an easy household, thought Clyde. How liberal and indifferent.

He laughed and felt irrepressibly gay.

And that despite the fact that he was dealing with a girl who no more knew her own mind than a moth, and who was just reaching the stage where she was finding it convenient and profitable to use boys of her own years or a little older for whatever pleasures or clothes she desired.

He considered that his social position was perfectly secure, and was utterly scornful of anything but commercial success.

Nevertheless he was so much interested in himself that he scarcely found room in his cosmos for a keen and really intelligent understanding of anyone else.

For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device and another forced to make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone depended his future. His family, as he now definitely sensed, could do nothing for him. They were too impractical and too poor—his mother, father, Esta, all of them.

We want you to succeed more than you know, but we also want you to be a good boy, and live a clean, righteous life, for, my son, what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?

Write your mother, Clyde, and bear in mind that her love is always with you—guiding you—pleading with you to do right in the name of the Lord. Affectionately,

It was necessary when dealing with the classes and intelligences below one, commercially or financially, to handle them according to the standards to which they were accustomed. And the best of these standards were those which held these lower individuals to a clear realization of how difficult it was to come by money—to an understanding of how very necessary it was for all who were engaged in what both considered the only really important constructive work of the world—that of material manufacture—to understand how very essential it was to be drilled, and that sharply and systematically, in all the details and processes which comprise that constructive work. And so to become inured to a narrow and abstemious life in so doing. It was good for their characters. It informed and strengthened the minds and spirits of those who were destined to rise. And those who were not should be kept right where they were.

men and women of various nationalities, and types—Americans, Poles, Hungarians, French, English—and for the most part—if not entirely touched with a peculiar something—ignorance or thickness of mind or body, or with a certain lack of taste and alertness or daring,

He was, as they saw it, part of the rich and superior class and every poor man knew what that meant. The poor must stand together everywhere.

And his aloof and condescending manner Dillard at once translated as "class" and "connection."

the year round in this concern,

Nevertheless, Clyde was a Griffiths and that was enough to cause him to overlook nearly anything, for the present anyhow.

And he gathered from Dillard's manner, his flighty enthusiasm for the occasion, that he was far more interested in the girls as girls—a certain freedom or concealed looseness that characterized them—than he was in the social phase of the world which they represented.

And most of them were of that type of mind that respects insolence even where it pretends to condemn it.

And as even Clyde noted on meeting them, they were as keen for as close an approach to pagan pleasure without admitting it to themselves, as it was possible to be and not be marked for what they were.

Clyde found himself insensibly drifting into a kind of intimacy with this girl which boded he could scarcely say what.

But I can't help but think that his real idea in coming here is that you'll do more for him than you would for someone else, just because he is related to you." "Oh, you think he does. Well, if he does, he's wrong." But at the same time, he added, and that with a bantering smile: "He may not be as impractical as you think, though. He hasn't been here long enough for us to really tell, has he? He didn't strike me that way in Chicago. Besides there are a lot of little corners into which he might fit, aren't there, without any great waste, even if he isn't the most talented fellow in the world? If he's content to take a small job in life, that's his business. I can't prevent that. But at any rate, I don't want him sent away yet, anyhow, and I don't want him put on piece work. It wouldn't look right. After all, he is related to us. Just let him drift along for a little while and see what he does for himself."

The fair, plump, sensuous Rita!

"My nephew, I believe," she smiled. "Yes," replied Clyde simply, and because of his nervousness, with unusual dignity. "I am Clyde Griffiths."

Still, not being dead to the need of force and energy in business and sensing that Clyde was undoubtedly lacking in these qualities, he did now wish that Clyde had more vigor and vim in him.

She was blonde—tow-headed—with clear almond-shaped, greenish-gray eyes, a small, graceful, catlike figure, and a slinky feline manner. At once, on entering, she sidled across the room to the end of the table where Mrs. Griffiths sat and leaning over her at once began to purr. "Oh, how are you, Mrs. Griffiths? I'm so glad to see you again.

For to him, youth and beauty in such a station as this represented the ultimate triumph of the female.

Sondra nodded, pleased to note in the first instance that he was somewhat better-looking than Bella's brother, whom she did not like—next that he was obviously stricken with her, which was her due, as she invariably decided in connection with youths thus smitten with her. But having thus decided, and seeing that his glance was persistently and helplessly drawn to her, she concluded that she need pay no more attention to him, for the present anyway. He was too easy.

There were so many women and girls of so many different types and moods. And here they were so remote from men or idle pleasure in any form, all alone with just him, really.

Ignorant and pagan, she saw in Clyde some one whom, even for so much as an hour, assuming that he would, she would welcome—and that most eagerly.

She was so pretty and cute. Yet she was a working girl, as he remembered now, too—a factory girl, as Gilbert would say, and he was her superior. But she was so pretty and cute.

As for the parents of Roberta, they were excellent examples of that native type of Americanism which resists facts and reveres illusion.

Titus Alden was one of that vast company of individuals who are born, pass through and die out of the world without ever quite getting any one thing straight. They appear, blunder, and end in a fog. Like his two brothers, both older and almost as nebulous, Titus was a farmer solely because his father had been a farmer. And he was here on this farm because it had been willed to him and because it was easier to stay here and try to work this than it was to go elsewhere. He was a Republican because his father before him was a Republican and because this county was Republican. It never occurred to him to be otherwise. And, as in the case of his politics and his religion, he had borrowed all his notions of what was right and wrong from those about him. A single, serious, intelligent or rightly informing book had never been read by any member of this family—not one. But they were nevertheless excellent, as conventions, morals and religions go— honest, upright, God-fearing and respectable.

At the same time, because of a warm, imaginative, sensuous temperament, she was filled—once she reached fifteen and sixteen—with the world-old dream of all of Eve's daughters from the homeliest to the fairest—that her beauty or charm might some day and ere long smite bewitchingly and so irresistibly the soul of a given man or men.

Nevertheless she remained working for Mr. Appleman until she was between eighteen and nineteen, all the while sensing that she was really doing nothing for herself because she was too closely identified with her home and her family, who appeared to need her.

was she not a poor working girl? And was he not a very rich man's nephew? He would not marry her, of course. And what other legitimate thing would he want with her? She must be on her guard in regard to him.

For his was a feverish, urgent disposition where his dreams were concerned, and could ill brook the delay or disappointments that are the chief and outstanding characteristics of the ambitions of men, whatever their nature.

"Oh, well, then maybe you don't, but you are just the same. But that won't help you much either, unless you have money—that is, if you want to run with people who have." She looked up at him and added quite blandly. "People like money even more than they do looks."

Sondra was of the exact order and spirit that most intrigued him—a somewhat refined (and because of means and position showered upon her) less savage, although scarcely less self-centered, Hortense Briggs. She was, in her small, intense way, a seeking Aphrodite, eager to prove to any who were sufficiently attractive the destroying power of her charm, while at the same time retaining her own personality and individuality free of any entangling alliance or compromise.

The others, not so very much impressed by Clyde, were still not a little interested by the fact that she seemed so interested in him.

She slipped a white arm under Clyde's and he felt as though he were slowly but surely being transported to paradise.

But the day before, following his word to her that he could not be with her that evening, his manner was gayer, less sober, than his supposed affection in the face of her departure would warrant.

But ad interim, all her thoughts were on how and in what way she could make more sure, if at all, of Clyde's continued interest and social and emotional support, as well as marriage in the future.

"Do you like that Miss Finchley very much?"

And strangely, considering his first approaches toward Roberta, the thought was without lust, just the desire to constrain and fondle a perfect object.

"You don't know what effect you have on me. You're so beautiful. Oh, you are. You know you are. I think about you all the time. Really I do, Sondra. You've made me just crazy about you, so much so that I can hardly sleep for thinking about you. Gee, I'm wild! I never go anywhere or see you any place but what I think of you all the time afterward. Even to-night when I saw you dancing with all those fellows I could hardly stand it. I just wanted you to be dancing with me—no one else. You've got such beautiful eyes, Sondra, and such a lovely mouth and chin, and such a wonderful smile."

She was so trapped and entranced by his passion for her that it seemed to her now as though she might care for him as much as he wished.

But most foolishly anticipating, as he now did, a future more substantial than the general local circumstances warranted, he was more concerned than ever lest his present relationship to Roberta should in any way prove inimical to all this.

One thing was certain. He must get her out of this. He must! But how? How?

Clyde was so worried that he was not able to completely enjoy this new and to him exquisitely thrilling demonstration of affection on her part—this new and amazing social and emotional victory of his.

The truth was that in this crisis he was as interesting an illustration of the enormous handicaps imposed by ignorance, youth, poverty and fear as one could have found.

Also that Clyde, unless he was truly playing about with some girl here who was in trouble, was foolish to be helping anybody else in this way—particularly a working-man. You bet he wouldn't.

Yet because of the ignorance and stupidity of so many of those about him, he was able to consider himself at least fairly learned.