Literary Analysis Of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy

social history with economic tendencies, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party incorporates many subfields of history; such as social, economic, and cultural histories successfully. The aspect of social history and the explanation of the lower classes propelling events of the American Revolution was particularly effective and fresh. Young uses members of lower classes to uncover various risings and rebellions. Members of the elite believed that the lower class were ramblers and were uncivilized. The radicalism of the common man was swept under the rug. Young mirrors the writing of E.P. Thompson’s, The Making of the English Working Class. Both writers are meticulous in their interpretation of the common man. Furthermore, Thompson and Young examine just how much class conflict effects the constructs of history.

A dream can push people into the upper level, but dreams do not always come true. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez is about immigrants who move to America. This is a book of the story collection; also, it combines different emotions, especially love and guilt. Alma loves her daughter, Maribel, more than anything else like every parent does, so Maribel is the only reason they are in America. Alma does as much as she can to Maribel. Although Alma is a newcomer to America, she becomes stronger because of her daughter.

The first example of society behavior is used through the story of a late thirties white man name Benhard Goetz who shoots four black youths on a subway cart in New York. This anecdote is significant to the novel because it takes place in the mid-80s where society is pointed by drugs, and violent brutality wreaks havoc through the city of New York. Leaving his Manhattan apartment, Goetz hops on the subway and notices four African American youths “horsing around,” and “acting rowdy.” According to the story, Troy Canty, one of the boys, asked Goetz for five dollars. Out of instinct James another one of the boys, “gestured toward a suspicious-looking bulge in his pocket, as if he had a gun in there.”

Clare Boothe Luce once said, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable when you’re miserable.” Wealth is the American dream, a goal many strive for, but what are they willing to do for it and at what costs? In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the film Chicago directed by Rob Marshall, their yearning for wealth leads many to make demoralizing decisions in order to succeed. Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in the novel, is a wealthy man who lives in a mansion on the rich side of the city. Gatsby was in love with a woman named Daisy who ,while he was at war, left him for a wealthy man. Hence the reason why Daisy became Gatsby’s American dream and so he worked his way up the social classes to win her back. In the film Chicago, Roxie, a married woman, had an affair with a man who had “connections” with those in the dancing/singing industry. He lied and, consequently, she ended up shooting him. In prison, Roxie’s case became the story of the century and aided her ‘fame’. Although these works demonstrate that the American dream is achievable, based on the character's success, after closer analysis it is clear that the American dream is only achievable through corruption.

The Black Wall Street, Harlem Renaissance, Great Migration, and Great Depression are all period that came in mind, while reading this novel. To begin, the novel presented aspects of The Great Depression and Great Migration because it represented African American people escaping from the poverty, segregation, racism, violence, and lack of job opportunities they were exposed to in the South by migrating to the North. The novel itself represents The Harlem Renaissance because it was written when importance of literature during the time period for the African American people and the Black experience was growing. To continue, the Brothers throughout the novel were reminded of their class and race, which made them constantly aware of who they were and where they came from. This can be related to modern day Black men who experience poverty because they ar

The book The Ugly American clearly demonstrates several of the established Special Operations Force (SOF) imperatives outlined in ADRP 6-22. As a Special Forces soldier I can relate these imperatives to stories illustrated in the book and apply them to real life situations that I have experienced in the field. The Ugly American is a goldmine of wisdom and a handbook for special warfare. All Special Operations soldiers should read it.

 "The boy moved restlessly from one foot to the other, keeping his eyes down . . . . [and he] appeared indeed to resent and even to suffer from the position in which he found himself" (p.9). Clyde Griffiths always wanted to be somebody---anyone but who he was. Growing up in a poor home of evangelizing, exhorting missionaries, he was not drawn to God but pushed away from Him and his family. Clyde was looking for a way to escape from his haunting reality to both a place and position in life that were more attractive. He was ashamed of his looks, his attire, his social position and his poor education. American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser is the tragic story of

These examples from the novel along with numerous others show how persons corrupted the American Dream for the desire of wealth.

Eliade tells of the myth of the elite’s impact as such; “These myths, be it said, have succeeded in imposing themselves far beyond the closed corporation of the imitated principally because of the inferiority complex that now afflicts both the public and the official art circles.” (187). In this, we find a dark side to the self-made man. Working class Americans compare themselves to the self-made man, asking why this hasn’t happened to them yet. They followed all the rules, and yet they are still in the same economic situation, they were born into.

The author composes a strong narrative considering the audience he wanted to reach, by my view the young generation. He instantly capturing the hearts of the readers by using the five senses in his description and by creating a compelling narrative from an ordinary story that could have happened to anyone. While following the dynamic of the story, he gives us to look at the “six inches of new snow”, to hear “tire chains come clanking from afar”, to feel the cold weather “it was cloudy but cold”, to smell the “boiling oil” or even with more imagination the “garbage cans” and to taste symbolically “ every breath tore my throat”. The sensory details give the audience a good description of the vivid details. The time used

Economic instability is often While most depictions of the American dream in post-WWII America included some facet of economic stability, the writers of the Beat Generation, like Jack Kerouac, represented a fierce challenge to this notion; On the Road depicts characters on the search for something truly American, who relinquish the certainties of material wealth. In “Fishing the Sloe Black River” Colum McCann depicts an economically instable time in Ireland, and symbolically comments on Ireland’s inability to recover. Lastly, in Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi illustrates the harsh reality of social class in Iran and the overall imbalance between them.

By the later part of the 1800’s New York and Chicago were some of the largest cities in the world and both had populations that exceeded a million. With the growing population, the economy’s stability began to fluctuate. The instability within the states gave rise to two distinct populations within America, the upper and the working classes. Theodore Dreiser, knowing the volatile state America was built upon, highlighted the economic differences between the wealthy and the poor in his novel Sister Carrie.

In post-Depression America, the United States endured internal battles in political ideologies between capitalists and Marxists, which is the focus of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. According to Helge Normann Nilsen, author of “From Honors At Dawn to Death of a Salesman: Marxism and the Early Plays of Arthur Miller,” the Great Depression had a profound impact in forming the political identity of Arthur Miller: “The Great Depression created in him a lasting and traumatic impression of the devastating power of economic forces in the shaping of peoples’ lives” (146). This lasting effect on Miller is embodied in the character of Willy Loman, an unsuccessful salesman whose life collapses from the strain of his competition for

The historical period leading up to the Second World War was one marked with economic hardship for the vast majority of American citizens. After the emergence of an economic system based upon capital following the Industrial Revolution, the United States saw immense prosperity in the early twentieth century only to be ravaged by the stock market crash of 1929. This failure of the markets was one of the first signs that this new system, which relied on a vast labor force and an open and unregulated market, was not as reliable as some had previously thought. Despite the large scale industrialization that helped the United States achieve relative economic stability once again, there still existed a strong, radically socialist movement within the United States. In his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’ focus on specific material possessions as well as the class tensions between characters serves to highlight the forces of exploitation and oppression that exist and shape any capitalist society.

People can agree that the colonization and the spread of the British Empire had the barest of good moments. And those good moments are overshadowed by the massive amounts of negativity that occurred in the wake of their rule. The way the nations were treated is obscured by the immense sense of pride that is displayed when thinking about a nation 's people and past. This also transcended into the way that America views and treats other nations that they are “allied with” or “has ties with”, but I digress. In the view of the overall topic of our class being the “refusal to inherit the modern novel”, I would like to point out the contradictions of character and the motifs being displayed are both important to this scene in the essence of the