An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

nothing to do with a later practical life. ‘Judge not, lest ye be

judged and with whatsoever measure ye mete, it will be

measured unto ye again.’

“We admit the existence and charm and potent love spell of

the mysterious Miss X and her letters, which we have not

been able to introduce here, and their effect on this

defendant. We admit his love for this Miss X, and we

propose to show by witnesses of our own, as well as by

analyzing some of the testimony that has been offered

here, that perhaps the sly and lecherous overtures with

which this defendant is supposed to have lured the lovely

soul now so sadly and yet so purely accidentally blotted out,

as we shall show, from the straight and narrow path of

morality, were perhaps no more sly nor lecherous than the

proceedings of any youth who finds the girl of his choice

surrounded by those who see life only in the terms of the

strictest and narrowest moral regime. And, gentlemen, as

your own county district attorney has told you, Roberta

Alden loved Clyde Griffiths. At the very opening of this

relationship which has since proved to be a tragedy, this

dead girl was deeply and irrevocably in love with him, just

as at the time he imagined that he was in love with her. And

people who are deeply and earnestly in love with each

other are not much concerned with the opinions of others in

regard to themselves. They are in love—and that is

sufficient!

“But, gentlemen, I am not going to dwell on that phase of

the question so much as on this explanation which we are

about to offer. Why did Clyde Griffiths go to Fonda, or to

Utica, or to Grass Lake, or to Big Bittern, at all? Do you

An American Tragedy

982

think we have any reason for or any desire to deny or

discolor in any way the fact of his having done so, or with

Roberta Alden either? Or why, after the suddenness and

seeming strangeness and mystery of her death, he should

have chosen to walk away as he did? If you seriously think

so for one fraction of a moment, you are the most

hopelessly deluded and mistaken dozen jurymen it has

been our privilege to argue before in all our twenty-seven

years’ contact with juries.

“Gentlemen, I have said to you that Clyde Griffiths is not

guilty, and he is not. You may think, perhaps, that we

ourselves must be believing in his guilt. But you are wrong.

The peculiarity, the strangeness of life, is such that

oftentimes a man may be accused of something that he did

not do and yet every circumstance surrounding him at the

time seem to indicate that he did do it. There have been

many very pathetic and very terrible instances of

miscarriages of justice through circumstantial evidence

alone. Be sure! Oh, be very sure that no such mistaken

judgment based on any local or religious or moral theory of

conduct or bias, because of presumed irrefutable evidence,

is permitted to prejudice you, so that without meaning to,

and with the best and highest-minded intentions, you

yourselves see a crime, or the intention to commit a crime,

when no such crime or any such intention ever truly or

legally existed or lodged in the mind or acts of this

defendant. Oh, be sure! Be very, very sure!”

And here he paused to rest and seemed to give himself

over to deep and even melancholy thought, while Clyde,

heartened by this shrewd and defiant beginning was

inclined to take more courage. But now Belknap was talking

again, and he must listen—not lose a word of all this that

was so heartening.

An American Tragedy

983

“When Roberta Alden’s body was taken out of the water at

Big Bittern, gentlemen, it was examined by a physician. He

declared at the time that the girl had been drowned. He will

be here and testify and the defendant shall have the benefit

of that testimony, and you must render it to him.

“You were told by the district attorney that Roberta Alden

and Clyde Griffiths were engaged to be married and that

she left her home at Biltz and went forth with him on July

sixth last on her wedding journey. Now, gentlemen, it is so

easy to slightly distort a certain set of circumstances. ‘Were

engaged to be married’ was how the district attorney

emphasized the incidents leading up to the departure on

July sixth. As a matter of fact, not one iota of any direct

evidence exists which shows that Clyde Griffiths was ever

formally engaged to Roberta Alden, or that, except for some

passages in her letters, he agreed to marry her. And those

passages, gentlemen, plainly indicate that it was only under

the stress of moral and material worry, due to her condition

—for which he was responsible, of course, but which,

nevertheless, was with the consent of both—a boy of

twenty-one and a girl of twenty-three—that he agreed to

marry her. Is that, I ask you, an open and proper

engagement—the kind of an engagement you think of

when you think of one at all? Mind you, I am not seeking to

flout or belittle or reflect in any way on this poor, dead girl. I

am simply stating, as a matter of fact and of law, that this

boy was not formally engaged to this dead girl. He had not

given her his word beforehand that he would marry her …

Never! There is no proof. You must give him the benefit of

that. And only because of her condition, for which we admit

he was responsible, he came forward with an agreement to

marry her, in case … in case” (and here he paused and

rested on the phrase), “she was not willing to release him.

And since she was not willing to release him, as her various

An American Tragedy

984

letters read here show, that agreement, on pain of a public

exposure in Lycurgus, becomes, in the eyes and words of

the district attorney, an engagement, and not only that but a

sacred engagement which no one but a scoundrel and a

thief and a murderer would attempt to sever! But,

gentlemen, many engagements, more open and sacred in

the eyes of the law and of religion, have been broken.

Thousands of men and thousands of women have seen

their hearts change, their vows and faith and trust flouted,

and have even carried their wounds into the secret places

of their souls, or gone forth, and gladly, to death at their

own hands because of them. As the district attorney said in

his address, it is not new and it will never be old. Never!

“But it is such a case as this last, I warn you, that you are

now contemplating and are about to pass upon—a girl who

is the victim of such a change of mood. But that is not a

legal, however great a moral or social crime it may be. And

it is only a curious and almost unbelievably tight and yet

utterly misleading set of circumstances in connection with

the death of this girl that chances to bring this defendant

before you at this time. I swear it. I truly know it to be so.

And it can and will be fully explained to your entire

satisfaction before this case is closed.

“However, in connection with this last statement, there is

another which must be made as a preface to all that is to

follow.

“Gentlemen of the jury, the individual who is on trial here for

his life is a mental as well as a moral coward—no more and

no less—not a downright, hardhearted criminal by any

means. Not unlike many men in critical situations, he is a

victim of a mental and moral fear complex. Why, no one as

yet has been quite able to explain. We all have one secret

bugbear or fear. And it is these two qualities, and no others,

An American Tragedy

985

that have placed him in the dangerous position in which he

now finds himself. It was cowardice, gentlemen—fear of a

rule of the factory of which his uncle is the owner, as well as

fear of his own word given to the officials above him, that

caused him first to conceal the fact that he was interested

in the pretty country girl who had come to work for him. And

later, to conceal the fact that he was going with her.

“Yet no statutory crime of any kind there. You could not

possibly try a man for that, whatever privately you might

think. And it was cowardice, mental and moral, gentlemen,

which prevented him, after he became convinced that he

could no longer endure a relationship which had once

seemed so beautiful, from saying outright that he could not,

and would not continue with her, let alone marry her. Yet,