An American Tragedy

Roberta Alden is a working-class striver who believes that hard work will be enough to help her to escape a poverty-stricken life on the family farm. Roberta takes advantage of a greater acceptance of women working in nondomestic settings when she pursues jobs at New York factories. Despite being in her twenties, Roberta chooses to live in a rooming house that her parents approve of because they know that the owners are religious people.

The pivot in Roberta’s life comes when she meets Clyde. Clyde uses the power differential and Roberta’s dreams to convince Roberta to have a sexual relationship with him. Roberta knows enough about class and relationships that she is aware when Clyde drifts from her in pursuit of a more affluent woman. Roberta gains more class- and gender-consciousness because of this conflict with Clyde; when she sees Clyde talking with a moneyed young woman in a fancy car, “she found herself a prey to an even more complaining and antagonistic mood than had hitherto characterized her. It was not right. It was not fair” (185). This reference to what “had hitherto characterized her” explicitly signifies her character development.

Roberta stands up for herself by forcing Clyde to acknowledge the impact of this unfairness and the double-standard for men and women. She retreats to more idealized notions of marriage and love when she goes home to Blitz to prepare clothing for her wedding and honeymoon. When she goes on the trip out to Big Bittern with Clyde, she sees it as proof that Clyde will marry her and thus help her to preserve the appearance of respectability. Clyde is responsible for her death, but conventional morality, class inequality, and gender inequality all play a role as well.

Elvira Griffiths is Clyde’s mother. Like Roberta, she is the daughter of a poor farming family. Dreiser describes her as a sturdy and determined woman who sees her life and relationships through the prism of her faith. Elvira’s faith leads her to believe that God arranges all things as they should be and that humans have free will. The first belief prevents her and her husband from shifting to work that will allow their family to be more stable financially. She also believes that sheltering her children from the world will be enough to make them follow her religious beliefs. Her insistence on living outside of the world leaves her children unprepared for life outside of the family. Through Elvira, Dreiser explores the theme of The Negative Impact of Religion in America.

Elvira appears in the novel through scripture-filled letters exhorting Clyde to live a more godly life. However, she also appears as a committed mother who believes that her faith will help her save her son. This effort fails in part because of the limitations of Elvira’s religious beliefs which stop her from reaching out to other faith communities. She also misreads the interests of the press in her son’s case. Elvira’s last action in the novel is to allow her grandson to have a treat—something that she never would have allowed Clyde to have. This action shows that she has a better understanding of how the world works—a bittersweet point that relates to the prominence of consumer goods and capitalism in the novel.

Samuel Griffiths is Clyde’s paternal uncle. Samuel sees himself as a self-made man who turned an inheritance into a shirt collar empire that allows his family to live in style. Dreiser hence explicitly presents the irony of generational wealth being associated with self-made financial success. Samuel is proud of his success but also ashamed that part of the money that helped him found the company should have gone to Clyde’s father. Dreiser therefore uses Samuel to explore generational wealth and exploitational labor practices.

Samuel values family and respectability. These two values motivate him to take Clyde out of the shrinking room and to pay Clyde’s defense lawyers during the initial trial. When Samuel does have lapses of judgment, such as when he allows Gilbert to treat Clyde poorly or when the family ignores Clyde socially, he tries to make amends. Sometimes those efforts are about maintaining respectability, but at other times those efforts arise from empathy for others. At the end of the novel, Samuel refuses to pay the costs for Clyde’s appeal. He moves his family and factory to Boston. Ultimately, he chooses his immediate family and respectability over Clyde’s desire to avoid execution.

Orville Mason is the ambitious district attorney who prosecutes Clyde. He is term-limited, so his major motivation in Part 3 is to gain the Republican nomination for a judgeship. Mason cuts corners and violates legal ethics in prosecuting Clyde. His actions contribute to the theme of The Tragedy of American Justice. Dreiser describes Mason as a man who overcompensates to overcome his shame about his early poverty and a scar on his face. By the end of the novel, Mason has gone from being a country district attorney to being a strong candidate to win the judgeship.

Asa is Clyde’s father. He is a poor provider for his children and his particular brand of Christianity provides cover for his poor work ethic and lack of critical thinking. Asa is a flat character; Dreiser doesn’t spend much time developing Asa’s character in any depth, but rather presents Asa’s improvidence and dependence on others to show their damaging influence on Clyde.

Alvin Belknap and Ruben Jephson are Clyde’s defense lawyers. Their defense of Clyde and their reasons for taking his case underscore The Tragedy of American Justice: Both Belknap and Jephson are Democrats who take the case in part because they want to beat Mason and thereby damage his chance of getting the judgeship. Both Belknap and Jephson are fairly sure that Clyde is guilty, but they help him to concoct a story to explain away Roberta’s death. They avoid mentioning Sondra’s name or the possibility that Clyde has an inherited predisposition to a psychological illness. Their choices suggest that money determines whether a person can expect a fair trial.

Esta is Clyde’s sister. Her unsuccessful quest for financial independence, marriage, and love in Part 1 serves as foreshadowing for Clyde and Roberta’s arcs. Like Clyde, she lacks the financial means to escape her class origins. Like Roberta, she finds being pregnant outside of marriage to be catastrophic. The difference between Roberta and Esta is that Esta confides in her mother and asks for help. She does what many women did during an age when they did not have ready access to contraception and abortion care—she gives her child to her mother and marries someone who, it is implied, has no idea about the child. The choices that she makes show the damaging influence of conventional morality and the intersection of gender and class inequality in the lives of women.

Sondra Finchley is a wealthy 17-year-old who begins dating Clyde to spite Gilbert Griffiths. Dreiser underscores her affluence with detailed descriptions of her car, clothing, hobbies, and hairstyles. For Clyde, Sondra becomes an object who will secure his place as an important Griffiths. Dreiser presents Sondra as an immature teenager who uses baby talk when communicating with Clyde and whose wealth shields her from having to deal with the unpleasantries of life. She exits the narrative via a brief note during which she tells Clyde that she, too, has suffered and that she won’t forget him. Sondra’s shallowness drives home the novel’s messages about socioeconomic disparities: She escapes even the hint of scandal by retreating behind her family’s wealth.

Hortense Briggs is the crass, acquisitive teenager with whom Clyde has his first relationship. Both struggle to makes sense of the relationship between sex and money. The difference between Clyde and Hortense is that Hortense already understands that beauty and sex are commodities that she can trade for attention or material things—the fur coat, for example. Clyde’s encounter with Hortense teaches him to be suspicious of women, to choose as partners women over whom he can exercise power and control, and that his own beauty is a commodity that can help him to achieve The American Dream.

Dr. Glenn is the doctor to whom Roberta applies for an abortion twice. He fears the legal consequences of getting caught, but his advice to Roberta is laced with class-based assumptions and moral superiority. His refusal to give Roberta an abortion shows the impact of gender and class prejudice on working-class women.

Gilbert Griffiths is the son of Samuel Griffiths and a foil to Clyde, his cousin. Gilbert is arrogant and condescending to even his family. Despite his lack of people skills, Gilbert is guaranteed to have a life of security because his family is rich, whereas Clyde is dependent on charm to make his way and lacks financial security. The difference in their two arcs suggests that wealth, not hard work, determines one’s fate.

Duncan McMillan is the minister Elvira sends to convince Clyde to repent for his actions. He and Elvira are evangelizing, nondenominational Christians. However, where Elvira is stolid and frequently dismissed because of her age and gender, Duncan gets a hearing from people ranging from Clyde to the governor because of his charisma and appearance. Duncan exercises a powerful influence on Clyde as his execution nears. Despite his opposition to the death penalty, he isn’t willing to tell the governor that Clyde deserves clemency. He believes that Clyde should be punished for his moral transgressions. After watching Clyde die in the electric chair, Duncan calls into question whether his refusal to ask the governor to commute Clyde’s sentence was “sound, fair or merciful” (359). His doubts reflect Dreiser’s skepticism about religion as a force for good in the novel.

The bellhops of the Green-Davidson are the first boys with whom Clyde has relationships when he enters the world of work. Dreiser explores the theme of Appearance Versus Reality through these characters. Clyde learns from them the importance of looking busy even if one is not. Clyde initially sees them as sophisticates who can teach him about how to approach women, how to dress, and how to live out the working-class version of excess that they see in the Green-Davidson. However, Clyde’s association with the bellhops mostly leads to disaster. Ratterer introduces him to Hortense, who uses Clyde for money. Sparser borrows and crashes the car, leading to the accident that causes Clyde to run away to Chicago.

Fred Heit is the country coroner who declares that Roberta was murdered. Dreiser uses him to connect different characters within the judicial system and drive the falling action after the murder. Heit is one of several people who engage in ethically and legally questionable behavior in their pursuit of Clyde.