An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

the psychologist but the chemist and physicist as well, to

unravel. To begin with, Asa Griffiths, the father, was one of

those poorly integrated and correlated organisms, the

product of an environment and a religious theory, but with

no guiding or mental insight of his own, yet sensitive and

therefore highly emotional and without any practical sense

whatsoever. Indeed it would be hard to make clear just how

life appealed to him, or what the true hue of his emotional

responses was. On the other hand, as has been indicated,

his wife was of a firmer texture but with scarcely any truer or

more practical insight into anything.

The history of this man and his wife is of no particular

interest here save as it affected their boy of twelve, Clyde

Griffiths. This youth, aside from a certain emotionalism and

exotic sense of romance which characterized him, and

which he took more from his father than from his mother,

brought a more vivid and intelligent imagination to things,

and was constantly thinking of how he might better himself,

if he had a chance; places to which he might go, things he

might see, and how differently he might live, if only this, that

and the other things were true. The principal thing that

troubled Clyde up to his fifteenth year, and for long after in

An American Tragedy

22

retrospect, was that the calling or profession of his parents

was the shabby thing that it appeared to be in the eyes of

others. For so often throughout his youth in different cities

in which his parents had conducted a mission or spoken on

the streets—Grand Rapids, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago,

lastly Kansas City—it had been obvious that people, at

least the boys and girls he encountered, looked down upon

him and his brothers and sisters for being the children of

such parents. On several occasions, and much against the

mood of his parents, who never countenanced such

exhibitions of temper, he had stopped to fight with one or

another of these boys. But always, beaten or victorious, he

had been conscious of the fact that the work his parents did

was not satisfactory to others,—shabby, trivial. And always

he was thinking of what he would do, once he reached the

place where he could get away.

For Clyde’s parents had proved impractical in the matter of

the future of their children. They did not understand the

importance or the essential necessity for some form of

practical or professional training for each and every one of

their young ones. Instead, being wrapped up in the notion

of evangelizing the world, they had neglected to keep their

children in school in any one place. They had moved here

and there, sometimes in the very midst of an advantageous

school season, because of a larger and better religious field

in which to work. And there were times, when, the work

proving highly unprofitable and Asa being unable to make

much money at the two things he most understood—

gardening and canvassing for one invention or another—

they were quite without sufficient food or decent clothes,

and the children could not go to school. In the face of such

situations as these, whatever the children might think, Asa

and his wife remained as optimistic as ever, or they insisted

An American Tragedy

23

to themselves that they were, and had unwavering faith in

the Lord and His intention to provide.

The combination home and mission which this family

occupied was dreary enough in most of its phases to

discourage the average youth or girl of any spirit. It

consisted in its entirety of one long store floor in an old and

decidedly colorless and inartistic wooden building which

was situated in that part of Kansas City which lies north of

Independence Boulevard and west of Troost Avenue, the

exact street or place being called Bickel, a very short

thoroughfare opening off Missouri Avenue, a somewhat

more lengthy but no less nondescript highway. And the

entire neighborhood in which it stood was very faintly and

yet not agreeably redolent of a commercial life which had

long since moved farther south, if not west. It was some

five blocks from the spot on which twice a week the open

air meetings of these religious enthusiasts and proselytizers

were held.

And it was the ground floor of this building, looking out into

Bickel Street at the front and some dreary back yards of

equally dreary frame houses, which was divided at the front

into a hall forty by twenty-five feet in size, in which had been

placed some sixty collapsible wood chairs, a lectern, a map

of Palestine or the Holy Land, and for wall decorations

some twenty-five printed but unframed mottoes which read

in part:

WINE IS A MOCKER, STRONG DRINK IS RAGING

AND WHOSOEVER IS DECEIVED THEREBY IS NOT

WISE.

TAKE HOLDOFSHIELD AND BUCKLER, AND STAND

UP FOR MINE HELP. PSALMS 35:2.

An American Tragedy

24

AND YE, MY FLOCK, THE FLOCK OF MY PASTURE

are men, AND I AM YOUR GOD, SAITHTHE LORD

GOD. EZEKIEL 34:31.

O GOD, THOU KNOWEST MY FOOLISHNESS, AND

MY SINS ARE NOT HID FROM THEE. PSALMS 69:5.

IF YE HAVE FAITH AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARDSEED,

YE SHALL SAY UNTO THIS MOUNTAIN, REMOVE

HENCE TO YONDER PLACE; AND IT SHALL MOVE;

AND NOTHING SHALL BEIMPOSSIBLE TO YOU.

MATTHEW 17:20.

FOR THE DAY. OF THE LORD IS NEAR. OBADIAH 15.

FOR THERE SHALL BE NO REWARD TO THE EVIL

MAN. PROVERBS 24:20.

LOOK, THEN, NOT UPON THE WINEWHEN IT

ISRED: IT BITETH LIKE A SERPENT, AND STINGETH

LIKE AN ADDER. PROVERBS 23:31, 32.

These mighty adjurations were as silver and gold plates set

in a wall of dross.

The rear forty feet of this very commonplace floor was

intricately and yet neatly divided into three small bedrooms,

a living room which overlooked the backyard and wooden

fences of yards no better than those at the back; also, a

combination kitchen and dining room exactly ten feet

square, and a store room for mission tracts, hymnals,

boxes, trunks and whatever else of non-immediate use, but

of assumed value, which the family owned. This particular

small room lay immediately to the rear of the mission hall

itself, and into it beforé or after speaking or at such times as

a conference seemed important, both Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths

were wont to retire—also at times to meditate or pray.

An American Tragedy

25

How often had Clyde and his sisters and younger brother

seen his mother or father, or both, in conference with some

derelict or semi-repentant soul who had come for advice or

aid, most usually for aid. And here at times, when his

mother’s and father’s financial difficulties were greatest,

they were to be found thinking, or as Asa Griffiths was wont

helplessly to say at times, “praying their way out,” a rather

ineffectual way, as Clyde began to think later.

And the whole neighborhood was so dreary and run-down

that he hated the thought of living in it, let alone being part

of a work that required constant appeals for aid, as well as

constant prayer and thanksgiving to sustain it.

Mrs. Elvira Griffiths before she had married Asa had been

nothing but an ignorant farm girl, brought up without much

thought of religion of any kind. But having fallen in love with

him, she had become inoculated with the virus of

Evangelism and proselytizing which dominated him, and

had followed him gladly and enthusiastically in all of his

ventures and through all of his vagaries. Being rather

flattered by the knowledge that she could speak and sing,

her ability to sway and persuade and control people with

the “word of God,” as she saw it, she had become more or

less pleased with herself on this account and so persuaded

to continue.

Occasionally a small band of people followed the preachers

to their mission, or learning of its existence through their

street work, appeared there later—those odd and mentally

disturbed or distrait souls who are to be found in every

place. And it had been Clyde’s compulsory duty throughout

the years when he could not act for himself to be in

attendance at these various meetings. And always he had

been more irritated than favorably influenced by the types

of men and women who came here—mostly men—down-

An American Tragedy

26

and-out laborers, loafers, drunkards, wastrels, the botched

and helpless who seemed to drift in, because they had no

other place to go. And they were always testifying as to how

God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this

or that predicament—never how they had rescued any one

else. And always his father and mother were saying “Amen”

and “Glory to God,” and singing hymns and afterward taking

up a collection for the legitimate expenses of the hall—

collections which, as he surmised, were little enough—

barely enough to keep the various missions they had

conducted in existence.