We meet a little band of six, a man of about fifty, shout, stout, with bushy hair protruding from under a round black felt hat, a most unimportant, looking person, who carried a small portable organ as in customarily used by street preambles and singers. And with him a woman perhaps five years his junior, taller, not so broad, bur solid of frame and vigorous, very plain in face and dress, and yet not homely, leading with one hand a small boy of seven and in the other carrying a Bible and several hymn books. With these three, but walking independently behind, was a girl of fifteen a boy of twelve and another girl of nine, all following obediently, but not too, enthusiastically in the wake of the others.
It was not, yet with a sweet languor about it all.
The man the father as he chased to be looked about him with seeming will eye assurance. The third of the family is Hester-the oldest girl, who until now had attempted to appear as unconscious and unaffected as possible, bestowed her rather slim and as yet undeveloped figure. This family was an unimportant looking (невзрачное семейство). The father had rather dubious baritone. Impractical materially inefficient feature of the father, whose weak black eyes and rather flabby but poorly clothed fissure bespoke more of failure than anything else.
At the group the mother alone stood out as having that force and determination which, however blind or erroneous, make for self-preservation, if not success in life… She stood up with an ignorant, yet somehow respectable air all conviction.
A tall and as yet slight fissure, surmounted by an interesting head and face while skin, dark hair he seemed more keenly observant indeed to resent and even to suffer from the position in which he found himself. Plainly pagan rather than religious, life interested him, although as yet he was not fully aware of this. All that coned be truly said of him now was that there was no definite appeal in all this for him. He was too young, his mind much to responsive to pleases of beauty and Theodore Dreiser fought for life and for justice and in these fields he opened new era of a prose and publicist writer. He paved the path for Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and others. If he could save some success in his youth he achieved it thanks to his hard looking, he studied in the University of Life. He worked hard for newspapers. Only from 1887 he turned into writing.
The future writer felt that there existed an invisible wall between real life out the society of journalism and literature. He wrote that he became indignant because of the contradictions which existed between what he read and the things which he had experienced. In the books everything was beautiful, quiet. But the real life consisted of hardships; it was rule, low, there even was no hint of the beautiful. Theodore Dreiser chose facts well-known for him. The life described in «An American Tragedy» is very much like Dreiser spent in his youth. This book may be considered to be Dreiser’s the masterpiece, it is rich, and it penetrated deep American life. The events are true to life, there are much dark and light as well, and they are full of contradictions, conflicts, disappointments. True is one of true critics who consider that if even Dreiser’s main heroes hadn’t died. The fact would not b e able to hide the tragedy of the Clyde Griffith like youth. This book the life full of served as a mirror put before. Americans and later before the people of all world, because the novel is translated into many languages of the world. The novel may be thought to be the most important, valuable for Dreiser. We feel pettiness according to Clyde. Sometimes we want him to achieve the desired, but unfortunately he is not to cope with the tasks put before him. We sympathies with him, but real life dictates him its own laws and these laws are heavy. Clyde is too passive in An American life one must be very strong willed. We can’t be simple spectator or observer of Clyde’s fate. We are sorry for him when he is sentences to death to an electric chair. We don’t like his behavior; he falls down little by little. He is not eager to help himself, he is not honest. At the some time we understand that the society in which is born is also responsible for his failure. The problem of Clyde like people failure is put not only in «An American Tragedy» but in Dreiser’s other things as well.
The book exposes that the idea as if «American has great opportunities» is not so in reality. Material wealth does not comprise the base of happiness. An individual’s interests are criticized when they are private interests.
The author opposes the characteristic features of a common people from humanistic point of view. We are quoting citing this passage in order to show yare how poor was Clyde Griffith’s childhood. He is from a poor family. He «appeared indeed to resent, and even to suffer from the position in which he found himself», the family was always «hard up», never very well clothed, and deprived of many comforts and pleasures which seemed common enough to others. Hester or Esta the older daughter was called by the family.
Asa Griffiths – the father, was one of those poorly integrated and correlated organisms, the product of an environment and a religions 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 full of his emotional responses was.
The creator of the novel is interested in Asa Griffiths and his wife because of their relation to Clyde, who was only twelve years old.