The one thing that really interested him in connection with
his parents was the existence somewhere in the east—in a
small city called Lycurgus, near Utica he understood—of an
uncle, a brother of his father’s, who was plainly different
from all this. That uncle—Samuel Griffiths by name—was
rich. In one way and another, from casual remarks dropped
by his parents, Clyde had heard references to certain things
this particular uncle might do for a person, if he but would;
references to the fact that he was a shrewd, hard business
man; that he had a great house and a large factory in
Lycurgus for the manufacture of collars and shirts, which
employed not less than three hundred people; that he had a
son who must be about Clyde’s age, and several
daughters, two at least, all of whom must be, as Clyde
imagined, living in luxury in Lycurgus. News of all this had
apparently been brought west in some way by people who
knew Asa and his father and brother. As Clyde pictured this
uncle, he must be a kind of Croesus, living inease and
luxury there in the east, while here in the west—Kansas City
—he and his parents and his brother and sisters were living
in the same wretched and hum-drum, hand-to-mouth state
that had always characterized their lives.
An American Tragedy
27
But for this—apart from anything he might do for himself, as
he early began to see—there was no remedy. For at fifteen,
and even a little earlier, Clyde began to understand that his
education, as well as his sisters’ and brother’s, had been
sadly neglected. And it would be rather hard for him to
overcome this handicap, seeing that other boys and girls
with more money and better homes were being trained for
special kinds of work. How was one to get a start under
such circumstances? Already when, at the age of thirteen,
fourteen and fifteen, he began looking in the papers, which,
being too worldly, had never been admitted to his home, he
found that mostly skilled help was wanted, or boys to learn
trades in which at the moment he was not very much
interested. For true to the standard of the American youth,
or the general American attitude toward life, he felt himself
above the type of labor which was purely manual. What!
Run a machine, lay bricks, learn to be a carpenter, or a
plasterer, or plumber, when boys no better than himself
were clerks and druggists’ assistants and bookkeepers and
assistants in banks and real estate offices and such!
Wasn’t it menial, as miserable as the life he had thus far
been leading, to wear old clothes and get up so early in the
morning and do all the commonplace things such people
had to do?
For Clyde was as vain and proud as he was poor. He was
one of those interesting individuals who looked upon
himself as a thing apart—never quite wholly and
indissolubly merged with the family of which he was a
member, and never with any profound obligations to those
who had been responsible for his coming into the world. On
the contrary, he was inclined to study his parents, not too
sharply or bitterly, but with a very fair grasp of their qualities
and capabilities. And yet, with so much judgment in that
direction, he was never quite able—at least not until he had
An American Tragedy
28
reached his sixteenth year—to formulate any policy in
regard to himself, and then only in a rather fumbling and
tentative way.
Incidentally by that time the sex lure or appeal had begun to
manifest itself and he was already intensely interested and
troubled by the beauty of the opposite sex, its attractions for
him and his attraction for it. And, naturally and
coincidentally, the matter of his clothes and his physical
appearance had begun to trouble him not a little—how he
looked and how other boys looked. It was painful to him
now to think that his clothes were not right; that he was not
as handsome as he might be, not as interesting. What a
wretched thing it was to be born poor and not to have any
one to do anything for you and not to be able to do so very
much for yourself!
Casual examination of himself in mirrors whenever he
found them tended rather to assure him that he was not so
bad-looking—a straight, well-cut nose, high white forehead,
wavy, glossy, black hair, eyes that were black and rather
melancholy at times. And yet the fact that his family was the
unhappy thing that it was, that he had never had any real
friends, and could not have any, as he saw it, because of
the work and connection of his parents, was now tending
more and more to induce a kind of mental depression or
melancholia which promised not so well for his future. It
served to make him rebellious and hence lethargic at times.
Because of his parents, and in spite of his looks, which
were really agreeable and more appealing than most, he
was inclined to misinterpret the interested looks which were
cast at him occasionally by young girls in very different
walks of life from him—the contemptuous and yet rather
inviting way in which they looked to see if he were
interested or disinterested, brave or cowardly.
An American Tragedy
29
And yet, before he had ever earned any money at all, he
had always told himself that if only he had a better collar, a
nicer shirt, finer shoes, a good suit, a swell overcoat like
someboys had! Oh, the fine clothes, the handsome homes,
the watches, rings, pins that some boys sported; the
dandies many youths of his years already were! Some
parents of boys of his years actually gave them cars of their
own to ride in. They were to be seen upon the principal
streets of Kansas City flitting to and fro like flies. And pretty
girls with them. And he had nothing. And he never had had.
And yet the world was so full of so many things to do—so
many people were so happy and so successful. What was
he to do? Which way to turn? What one thing to take up
and master—something that would get him somewhere. He
could not say. He did not know exactly. And these peculiar
parents were in no way sufficiently equipped to advise him.
An American Tragedy
30
Chapter 3
ONE of the things that served to darken Clyde’s mood just
about the time when he was seeking some practical
solution for himself, to say nothing of its profoundly
disheartening effect on the Griffiths family as a whole, was
the fact that his sister Esta, in whom he took no little
interest (although they really had very little in common), ran
away from home with an actor who happened to be playing
in Kansas City and who took a passing fancy for her.
The truth in regard to Esta was that in spite of her guarded
up-bringing, and the seeming religious and moral fervor
which at times appeared to characterize her, she was just a
sensuous, weak girl who did not by any means know yet
what she thought. Despite the atmosphere in which she
moved, essentially she was not of it. Like the large majority
of those who profess and daily repeat the dogmas and
creeds of the world, she had come into her practices and
imagined attitude so insensibly from her earliest childhood
on, that up to this time, and even later, she did not know
the meaning of it all. For the necessity of thought had been
obviated by advice and law, or “revealed” truth, and so long
as other theories or situations and impulses of an external
or even internal, character did not arise to clash with these,
she was safe enough. Once they did, however, it was a
foregone conclusion that her religious notions, not being
grounded on any conviction or temperamental bias of her
own, were not likely to withstand the shock. So that all the
while, and not unlike her brother Clyde, her thoughts as well
An American Tragedy
31
as her emotions were wandering here and there—to love,
to comfort—to things which in the main had little, if
anything, to do with any self-abnegating and self-
immolating religious theory. Within her was a chemism of
dreams which somehow counteracted all they had to say.
Yet she had neither Clyde’s force, nor, on the other hand,
his resistance. She was in the main a drifter, with a vague
yearning toward pretty dresses, hats, shoes, ribbons and
the like, and super-imposed above this, the religious theory
or notion that she should not be. There were the long bright
streets of a morning and afternoon after school or of an
evening. The charm of certain girls swinging along together,
arms locked, secrets a-whispering, or that of boys,
clownish, yet revealing through their bounding ridiculous