An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser

• 21 september 2019
• 1230003435403

Samenvatting:

Ambitious, handsome, but ill-educated, naïve, and immature, Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with prostitutes.

Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with manipulative Hortense Briggs, who persuades Clyde to buy her expensive gifts. When Clyde learns Hortense goes out with other men, he becomes jealous. Still Clyde would rather spend money on Hortense than to help his sister who had eloped only to end up pregnant and abandoned.