An American Tragedy (Style)

Style

Naturalism

Many scholars consider An American Tragedy the defining work of American naturalism, and the novel does incorporate all the hallmarks of the naturalist movement.

Naturalism emerged in France in the 1870s and 1880s in response to new philosophical and scientific ideas, especially Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Émile Zola defined the movement in France. It flowered in the United States from the final years of the nineteenth century through World War I and into the 1920s. The standard-bearers of American naturalism, in addition to Dreiser, are Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, O. Henry, and poet Edgar Lee Masters.

At the core of naturalism is determinism, the idea that an individual's course in life is wholly determined by some combination of animal instinct, heredity, and environment. The individual will is said to be incapable of operating outside the influence of these powerful forces. As in Darwin's theory, only those who are genetically suited to their environment will survive and prosper — a principle most often expressed as "the survival of the fittest."

Naturalist writers portray these principles by creating ordinary characters, placing them in extraordinary or challenging circumstances, and narrating their reactions in a dispassionate, reportorial style. Thus, Dreiser draws Clyde as an Everyman who is motivated by animal instincts (the drive for sex and for a desirable mate, for example). His challenge is that he is born poor in a society that values only money and the pleasures it can buy. The child of weak, ineffectual parents, Clyde is not equipped by heredity to succeed in this environment, where people compete for power, position, and wealth. He is not "fit," and his destiny is failure. The same is true of his female counterpart, Roberta. The children of the wealthy and powerful, however, inherit not only wealth but also the attributes they need to master their environment. Therefore, they succeed, usually with very little effort.

Doubling

Dreiser liberally uses the technique of doubling throughout An American Tragedy, creating doubles for both characters and events.

To highlight the contrasts between the lives of the poor and those of the rich, Dreiser creates his significant characters in pairs: Clyde's upper-class counterpart is his cousin Gilbert, and Roberta's is Sondra; Clyde's parents have doubles in his aunt and uncle; and so on.

Adding to the novel's complexity, Dreiser also pairs each significant character in the first part of the book (in Kansas City) with a double who appears later (in Lycurgus). Very early in the story, Clyde's sister Esta is seduced, impregnated, and abandoned by a traveling actor. Much later, Roberta appears as her double, seduced, impregnated, and abandoned in the most terrible and final way by Clyde, who is also an itinerant (neither from nor permanently settled in Lycurgus) and also an "actor" (a deeply and consistently dishonest man who lies about everything from his family background to his murderous intentions). In Kansas City, Clyde has a relationship with a woman of loose morals named Hortense Briggs; her counterpart in Lycurgus is Rita Dickerman.

Dreiser provides events in pairs as well. One striking example is that, in Kansas City, Clyde runs away from the wreckage of a car in which he has been a passenger and which has hit and killed a pedestrian. The double for this event is Clyde's swimming away from the capsized boat and Roberta as she cries for his help.

The doubling of events serves several purposes. First, the earlier event in each pair is a fore-shadowing of the later one. Second, the doubling creates a predictable pattern and symmetrical structure for the novel. The perceptive reader comes to expect the second beat — a sensation similar to waiting for the other foot to fall. Third, the doubling of characters and events conveys Dreiser's message that Clyde cannot escape his predetermined fate. People and events are the same in Lycurgus and in Kansas City. Clyde may flee from one city and state to another, but he cannot bring about any meaningful change in his life. He is hemmed in by fate, and the many doubled events and characters of the novel seem to wall Clyde in, leaving him no room for escape.