An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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