论嘉莉妹妹的美国梦.doc

论嘉莉妹妹的美国梦

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Abstract

Sister Carrie is the first novel of Theodore Dreiser, the outstanding novelist in American literature. The novel received wide controversy since its publication, and the main character Carrie is also a controversial person. The thesis tries to analyze Carrie’s American Dream and the causes of her disillusioned dream.
Besides an introduction and a conclusion, the thesis is divided into three parts. In the introduction, the author introduces the plot of Sister Carrie and former studies on Sister Carrie briefly. And the author also tells the purpose of the thesis. In the first chapter, the author introduces Dreiser and his works first, and then describes American social environment in the 1900s. In the second chapter, the author briefly introduces American Dream and analyzes what Carrie’s American Dream is. In the third chapter, the author tries to explain how Carrie’s American Dream disillusioned, and then gives two causes of Carrie’s disillusion with the American Dream: one is her greed, another is her way of pursuing happiness. At last, the author draws the conclusion: Carrie is the representative of most Americans in the early 20th century, her way of pursuing happiness is influenced by the social environment. And we should draw a lesson from her.

Key words: Carrie; American Dream; desire; disillusion

摘要

《嘉莉妹妹》是美国文学中著名的小说家西奥多•德莱赛的处女作。小说自发表以来受到广泛争议，小说的主角嘉莉妹妹也是一个争议性人物。本文试图分析嘉莉的美国梦以及她梦想破灭的原因。
除了引言和结尾部分，本文被分为三个章节。在引言部分，作者简要介绍了《嘉莉妹妹》的故事情节以及前人对《嘉莉妹妹》的研究并提出了本文的研究目的。第一章主要介绍了西奥多•德莱赛的生平以及作品，然后作者描述了二十世纪初美国的社会环境。第二章简要分析了美国梦，然后又描述了嘉莉妹妹的美国梦的内涵。第三章作者试图解释嘉莉妹妹的美国梦是如何幻灭的，并且给出了两点导致梦想破灭的原因：其一，嘉莉的贪婪；其二，嘉莉追求幸福的方式。最后，作者得出结论：嘉莉是20世纪初期大多数美国人的代表，她追求幸福的方式是受到美国当时社会环境影响的。

关键词：嘉莉；美国梦；欲望；幻灭

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Contents

Abstract I
Chapter One Introduction 1
Chapter Two Social and Literary Background 4
I. The Writer and His Works 4
II. American Social Environment in the 1900s 6
Chapter Three Sister Carrie’s American Dream 8
I. A Brief Introduction to American Dream 8
II. Sister Carrie’s American Dream 10
Chapter Four The Disillusion of Carrie’s American Dream and the causes 13
I. The Disillusion of Carrie’s American Dream 13
II. Causes of Carrie’s Disillusion with the American Dream 14
Chapter Five Conclusion 15
Works Cited 16

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Chapter One Introduction

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) is regarded as an outstanding American naturalism writer and one of American foremost novelists. In 1900, Dreiser’s first novel, Sister Carrie published in America, became a classic in American literature. And the novel had a great impact on many writers’ writing. Sister Carrie focuses on a country girl who has hopeless dreams. Sister Carrie came to Chicago alone, hoping that she could live a better life through her own efforts and hard work. But the actual situation was not always satisfactory. She tried her best to find herself a job, but she got just repeated setbacks. Sister Carrie lost in hunger, sickness and despair of unemployment. At this time, she met the salesman Drouet by accident. He showed the olive branch to her. Forced by the reality, Carrie became Drouet’s mistress. Then the bar manager Hurstwood who got to know Sister Carrie through Drouet fell in love with Carrie at first sight. Finally Hurstwood lied to Carrie and absconded with the money, and they settled in New York. In the center of the city buried Hurstwood. Because of the bankruptcy of his business and the long-term unemployment, he eventually committed suicide. However, Carrie showed her acting talent in New York and eventually became a widely-known star. Carrie eventually left Hurstwood because of the income gap and large capacity .The novel came to an end with Carrie’s glorious achievements and Hurstwood’s death.

At the very beginning of Sister Carrie, it has aroused much controversy from critics. The novel received mixed criticism. H.L.Mencken (1880-1956), the representative of the critics, thinks that it stands for the idea of freedom and is of high artistic value. Another school of critics, which is represented by The Business and The Life Newspaper, strongly criticized Sister Carrie, arguing that it ignores the traditional moral standards and the moral restraints, which may lead to suspicion, and even the society's moral decay. “Indeed, though turn-of the-century readers found Dreiser’s point of view crude and immoral, his influence on the fiction of the first quarter of the century is perhaps greater than any other writer’s’’(吴伟仁 134). Although it was under great controversy at the beginning of publishing, in a very long period of time, Sister Carrie has been proved to be a classic. Since its release, the study of Sister Carrie has not been interrupted. There are many books studying on Dreiser and Sister Carrie, one of those books is The Distinguished Theodore Dreiser (1955). It was co-written by Alfred Indian and Charles Shapiro. The book is a collection of a large number of critical articles on Sister Carrie, and it is valuable and comprehensive in the study of Sister Carrie. The study on Sister Carrie around the country has been developed to a mature stage. And there are no less than 300 critical articles on Sister Carrie at home at present.
There are many types of critical analysis methods, one of which is feminist critique, such as the New Image of Women in Sister Carrie. This type of literary criticism in the article has changed the protagonist-Carrie’s moral and ethical judgment, but from the perspective of human and woman’s rights, it analyzes the reasonableness of Carrie’s using her own advantages to meet her material needs. And in the writer’s mind, Carrie is the representative of the new woman who has enough courage to break through the traditional moral constraints, and is bold to pursue personal happiness and achieve self-value. In addition to different types of criticism, there are also numerous research papers on the theme of Sister Carrie, such as An Interpretation of Naturalism and Consumerism in Sister Carrie. In this kind of articles, Dreiser’s naturalism tendency in Sister Carrie has been fully revealed. In the article, the innocent little girl Carrie gradually sank into the slave of materialism, and this is exactly Dreiser’s expression which advocates his naturalism：Individuals succumb to external environment, and this is a society of surviving the fitness. Besides the naturalism theme, there are also articles that discuss the pragmatic theme in Sister Carrie, such as The Tragedy of Pragmatism-Taking Sister Carrie as An Example. This article analyzes the thought of pragmatism in Sister Carrie, which is result-oriented, not paying attention to principles. In order to survive, people neglect the moral constraints. And there are also articles which analyze the American Dream in Sister Carrie, such as The Naturalism and American Dream in Sister Carrie and An Analysis of the Shattered American Dream in Sister Carrie. This kind of article explores the shattered American dreams of those lower class people who have the desire to live a much better life through their own hard-working. Other articles analyze the causes of the fate of the protagonist’s in Sister Carrie, such as The Analysis of the Heroine’s Fate in Sister Carrie.
In addition, many critics also pay much attention to the relationship between the main characters in Sister Carrie, such as, The Interpretation of Impact on Carrie’s Growing from Four Male Figures. This kind of articles explore the materialized relationship in capitalist society, that is to say, the relationship between human beings is like commodity transaction. There are also articles which make analysis of gender and money relations in consumer society from the viewpoint of consumer culture to analyze the cause of the swelling desires of Carrie’s, such as An Analysis of the Fraudulent Theme of Sister Carrie in the Context of Consumption. Besides, there are articles that study on the relationship of man and society, man and nature and man and self in Sister Carrie from the perspective of ethic, such as The Ethical Interpretation of Sister Carrie. And there are also plenty of commentary papers on Sister Carrie, such as The Study on Sister Carrie in China. Through analyzing the research status at home and abroad, it is obvious that Chinese scholars mainly pay attention to the topic of the personal characters, ethical issues, and the cause of fate and so on. Here is another example of commentary article—A Comment on Divergence of Opinions Relating to Sister Carrie. This article summarizes different opinions on the issue-Carrie’s attitude towards life, personality, code of ethics and the morals of authors.
And in this paper, the author studies the main theme of Sister Carrie—American Dream. From the perspective of American Dream, the author analyses Carrie’s American Dream and studies the disillusionment of Carrie’s American Dream, and also gives causes of Carrie’s disillusion with the American Dream. From the analysis, we can see how American Dream influences Americans.

Chapter Two Social and Literary Background

I. The Writer and His Works

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. And he was the eleventh of thirteen children. Dreiser’s childhood was permanently scarred by the incompetence and poverty of his large family. His father, John Paul Dreiser, once rented a cotton mill and lived a comfortable life, and was a veteran wool manufacturer. However, in 1869 the mill caught a fire, and it was burnt to the ground. Of course, in the disaster, his father lost his fortunes. In addition, when his father rebuilt the mill, a beam fell down from the roof, hit him on the head. And he was disabled due to the injury. Since then, his father was very disappointed and lost all his courage and became extremely harsh, religious and stubborn. Meanwhile, his father was cheated very easily by other merchants, which caused his family became poorer. Dreiser was deeply dissatisfied with his father and the poverty Being disappointed at materialism of the capitalist society, Dreiser developed a profound and sincere consciousness of the tragedy of life in modern America.
Dreiser’s writing for a newspaper was the beginning of his literary career, which took him to St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and finally New York, where he got the position of a magazine editor. The year 1900 was a year that marked the end of an old century and the beginning of a new one, and it was this year that Dreiser published his first novel Sister Carrie, and “ this novel [Sister Carrie] reveals Dreiser’s basic style: simple in outline, tight in structure, serious in tone, and intense, dramatic in action” (吴定柏 136). Through this novel Dreiser opened the new ground of American naturalism.
Dreiser published his second novel Jennie Gerhardt in 1911, similar to that of his first, it was about a woman’s struggling and destruction in big city, and he took one of his sisters as prototype, “but Jennie’s character was based far more on what he had loved most in his mother” (Mattiessen 113). Then the first two novels of his Cowperwood trilogy were finished, which were The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914). And after this period, Dreiser published a series of his writings: a book of travel articles which is entitled A Traveler At Forty (1913), and his autobiographical novel The Genius (1915). Then Dreiser finished a collection of plays, such as Plays of the Natural and Supernatural (1916), Twelve Men and The Hand of the Potter (1919), and An American Tragedy (1925), a novel which was based on an actual New York murder case, and Joseph Wood Krutch called it “the greatest American novel of our generation” (Elias 225). An autobiography A Book About Myself came out in1922, and in 1931, Dreiser published another autobiography Dawn, and it was about his first twenty years. In 1947, the last novel of the trilogy, The Stoic had been finished.
A great literary work is acting as a mirror of social life, thoroughly reflecting and revealing the conflicts and evils existing in society. And definitely Theodore Dreiser’s writings are such great works, which reflect the ordinary people’s bewilderment of existence and the conflicts of American society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, describe the tragic life and miserable fate of people who live at the bottom of social ladder, and express Dreiser’s speculation on social realities and his deep sympathy for those people. Dreiser couldn’t figure out a solution to the ugly inequality under the capitalist system, and therefore in his novels he made harsh criticism on the society and expressed a deep sense of pessimism.
Theodore Dreiser was the first novelist who drastically criticized the futility of the American Dream in his writing. Sinclair Lewis said that Dreiser provides American literature with the “first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman”(钱青 117). Although he didn’t get the Nobel Prize for literature, he is “more than any other man, marching alone, usually unappreciated, often, hated, has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life” (Cowley 156). Moreover, he was a mighty writer who depicted the 20th century America vividly, realistically and profoundly. Over these years Dreiser “has become recognized as a profound and prescient critic of debased American values and as a powerful novelist” (Baym 72). After him there were also some writers who described the futility of the American Dream, and among whom were Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow and Steinbeck etc. He had a great impact on American literature during the first thirty years of the 20th century, and for a quite long time he was the only American writer who was worth mentioning in the same breath with the European masters.

II. American Social Environment in the 1900s

In the early 1900s, the United States had witnessed tremendous changes in its economic development, which was from a free status to a monopolizing one. Living in the worst slums which were full of smoke, waste of sewage and odor, flocks of proletariats were generated by the widely used machines, and thus mass production was consummated. Theodore Dreiser was greatly shocked and felt very sorry to those people who lived in villainous places but also tried very hard to make a living and to be happy. And it is a tough job when he was assigned to write reports about slums. In fact, the underprivileged worked day and night diligently in order to survive.
The emphasis upon productive efficiency, force, the accelerating industrializing process, and the new science-based philosophy of life created the social, economic and cultural transformation of this country. The econo