An American tragedy

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An American Tragedy ( Original: An American Tragedy ) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser from 1925 . The German translation by Marianne Schön was first published in 1927 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag , and in 1951 a licensed paperback edition of the German version was published by Rowohlt Verlag . Time magazine named this novel among the top 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

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In the fate of the central figure Clyde Griffiths, the son of a street preacher in Kansas City, the metaphor of a tragic biography is exemplified.

Griffiths, son of a preaching family, is dissatisfied with the narrowness and poverty of his living conditions and is looking for outward success. First he works as a page in a hotel and experiences the luxurious lifestyle of the guests there; his striving for a “better life” remains the driving force behind his actions. Increasingly and through a kind of pull of events, to which he abandons himself in a certain superficiality and weakness, he becomes entangled in guilt in this search for happiness.

By chance he is involved in a car accident in which a child dies. Panicked, he flees. In Chicago he meets his uncle Samuel Griffiths, a wealthy factory owner who gives him a job in his collar factory in Lycurgus. Lycurgus is a fictional middle town near Fonda and Gloversville in upstate New York . At first he is treated condescendingly as a “poor relative”, but he manages to gain entry into the “better circles”; he falls in love with the young Sondra Finchley and finds in her elegance, beauty, her superficial letters and evening parties the illusion of a perfect future.

But his relationship with the working-class girl Roberta Alden, who is expecting a child, dashed his hopes. He insists on an abortion, it fails, and Roberta insists on getting married. Your increasingly vehement pressure to get married is contrary to his life plan. In him the plot matures into murder.

Chapter 47, in which Clyde Griffiths' boat trip with his fiancée is described, is one of the literarily strongest passages in the work. The protagonist Clyde Griffiths hesitates, squirms, is terrified of the act and of himself, stands by his side, watching; So the event that capsized the boat is not an explicit murder, but also not an accident: in a scuffle he pushes Roberta away, wants to help her immediately afterwards, this movement causes the boat to sway and sink, he kills the injured don't help, don't act, and eventually drown them. Kaleidoscopic references to Oedipus of Sophocles can be drawn here (in the principle of tragedy , which is shown in the fact that the behavior that seeks to avert disaster itself leads to disaster) or to Joseph Conrad , whose Lord Jim is guilty by omission:

“Wait just a moment, a split minute. Wait - wait - and don't listen to that heartbreaking scream! And then - then - look! It's over, it's sinking! Never, never will you see her alive again - never again. There your own hat floats on the water, just as you wanted it to, her veil hangs from the oarlock of the boat. Leave him there; he can prove that it was an accident. "

- An American tragedy

In the third book of the three-part work, Clyde is arrested, charged with murder, and finally executed. Here the inner change of the protagonist unfolds, who turns from the formerly cowardly and driven to the repentant. In the meticulously described process, the impressive figures of the prosecutor Mason and the defense lawyer Jephson appear; however, it depicts the moral dubiousness of the American judicial system rather than a legitimate search for justice. Clyde's mother plays a prominent role here, standing by her son's side until the last minute. The references to Dostoevsky , especially to the work Schuld und Atonement , are open.

Some critics criticized the length of breath and the discrepancy between the demands and the linguistic design of the psychological dimensions; the clumsiness of the style sometimes does not do justice to the content.

The novel is based on a true story, the murder of Grace Brown in 1906. It sparked great controversy when it appeared.

interpretation

The protagonist is driven by the vision of his social advancement. In his pursuit of wealth, luxury and above all the acceptance of the higher social classes, he is blind to any chance of private happiness. The employment in his uncle's factory and his relationship with Roberta Alden, to whom he initially seems to have a sincere affection, could have created the possibility of a private idyll, which he discards, however, in order to appeal to Sondra Finchley and her world to tie. Through Roberta's pregnancy he finds himself in a dilemma from which he sees no other way out than the murder, which he desperately tries to justify to himself. Even if Raskolnikov's philosophical considerations in Dostoyevsky's Guilt and Atonement are much more abstract, the parallels are clearly recognizable. The novel can be read as a criticism of the American dream of advancement, but it goes beyond a simple criticism of society and capitalism. For example, it becomes clear that Clyde's origins and his strictly religious parents who are incapable of any practical life are also to blame for the tragedy. Furthermore, the personal abysses and psychological entanglements are illuminated.

expenditure

  • Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy . 3 vols. Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig: Paul Zsolnay 1927.
  • Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy . Hamburg: Rowohlt 1951.

Stage processing

  • An American tragedy . Adapted for the stage by Erwin Piscator based on the novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser . Ahn and Simrock, Berlin, Wiesbaden undated [around 1961] [= The ReGroup Theater Company (ed.): The Lost Group Theater Plays. Volume 3. The House of Connelly, Johnny Johnson, & Case of Clyde Griffiths . By Paul Green and Erwin Piscator. CreateSpace, New York 2013. ISBN 978-1-484150-13-9 ].
  • An American Tragedy . Opera based on Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy by Tobias Picker . First performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on December 2, 2005 with Nathan Gunn in the lead role.

Film and television versions

Radio play version

literature

  • Robert Penn Warren: Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy. In: Edgar Lohner (ed.): The American novel in the 19th and 20th centuries . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-503-00515-3 , pp. 152-161.
  • Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01203-4
  • Harenberg Lexicon of World Literature . Dortmund 1989, ISBN 3-611-00338-7
  • Kindler's New Literature Lexicon . Munich 1988, ISBN 3-463-43200-5
  • Walter F. Schirmer: History of the English and American literature . Tübingen 1983, ISBN 3-484-40098-6

Others

The novel was included in 2005 by the well-known American Time Magazine in its list of the top 100 English-language novels since 1923.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See on this: Kindler's New Literature Lexicon
  2. ↑ David Denby: The Cost of Desire . In: The New Yorker . April 14, 2003, ISSN  0028-792X ( newyorker.com [accessed December 22, 2018]).
  3. ↑ An American Tragedy | novel by Dreiser. In: Britannica. Retrieved December 22, 2018 .
  4. ↑ An American Tragedy (Opera) . English Wikipedia article
  5. ↑ TIME Specials: ALL TIME 100 Novels , Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, Time , October 16, 2005. Retrieved October 13, 2013.