Resumo de An American Tragedy

Basing the novel An American Tragedy (1925)on the factual case of Chester Gillette, who murdered Grace Brown in 1906, Theodore Dreiser uses an omniscient narrator who accumulates and repeats details, physical and psychological, to present powerfully the fall of Clyde Griffiths, a young man who for a while shakes off fundamental decency along with the Christian fundamentalism of his street-preaching parents. Fleeing Kansas City because of his involvement as a passenger in an automobile accident that kills a pedestrian, and leaving behind both a manipulative girlfriend and a job as a bellhop, he eventually meets his rich uncle, Samuel Griffiths, in Chicago, and arranges to work in the uncle?s collar factory in Lycurgus, New York. Clyde first has a lowly position, but his uncle, against the wishes of his own son, Gilbert, promotes Clyde to a managerial job, partly for the sake of appearance. Lonely and generally ignored by the Griffiths family of Lycurgus, Clyde breaks a company rule when he starts socializing with a young woman in his department, Roberta Alden, who has come to Lycurgus to earn money to send back to her parents on their impoverished farm. Never intending to marry Roberta, whom he considers socially beneath him, as pretty as she is, Clyde eventually uses psychological extortion to get into bed with her. At about the time she realizes that their efforts at contraception have failed, Clyde has become enamored with Sondra Finchley, a rich, beautiful socialite. Initially, Sondra is more interested in angering Gilbert than in forming a serious attachment to Clyde, but his good looks, charm, and inflation of the social status of his parents draw her into an infatuation with him, despite her mother?s disapproval, and they plan to elope when she turns eighteen in October. Meanwhile, however, efforts at procuring an abortion having failed, Roberta is pleading with Clyde to marry her, even if he stays with her only long enough for their child to be born in wedlock. Eventually, longing for the glittering life he would lead as Sondra?s husband, dreading the drudgery he foresees would be his if he married Roberta, and fearing that Sondra would break with him if she knew about a pregnant ex-girlfriend, Clyde draws evil inspiration from a newspaper article about an apparent boating accident in Massachusetts in which a woman?s body is found but the body of the man who was seen with her is missing. Clyde elaborately plots to let Roberta, a non-swimmer, drown in a deep, deserted lake in the Adirondacks. Nevertheless, his conscience, his fear, and his indecisiveness lead him to do something less than deliberately knock Roberta out of the rented rowboat. He does, however, deliberately refrain from rescuing her when the boat has capsized and then carries through with his plan to rendezvous with Sondra at Twelfth Lake, a more fashionable resort nearby.His plot as carried out, however, is not good enough to trick Orville Mason, the district attorney of Cataraqui County, and soon the sheriff has custody of Clyde, whom Mason charges with murder. All the evidence is circumstantial, and one item is even faked by one of Mason?s assistants; nevertheless, in its entirety the genuine evidence alone is compelling, especially Roberta?s pathetic letters to Clyde. Although Samuel Griffiths never sees or speaks with Clyde after the arrest, he hires the Bridgeburg law firm of Alvin Belknap and Reuben Jephson to defend his nephew. Fearing that the story Clyde tells him will lead to his conviction in a case gathering national attention, Jephson concocts a story that he thinks will fit the evidence Mason will present and may lead to acquittal, that story depending largely upon the admission of Clyde?s cowardice. Almost believing in his own technical innocence, Clyde lies as well as he can during his testimony and Mason?s fierce cross-examination; but the twelve jurymen actually formed their opinions before the trial began, and after five hours of deliberation they return a verdict of guilty.Because Samuel Griffiths will not pay Belknap and Jephson for an appeal and Clyde?s mother wants to be with her son at his sentencing, she arranges to earn money by reporting on the case for a newspaper in Denver, to which she and the rest of the immediate family have moved, and, upon Jephson?s suggestion, also agrees to help defray legal expenses by lecturing to religious audiences. The appeals court, however, decides in favor of the state, and the new governor of New York, meeting with Mrs. Griffiths and the Reverend Duncan McMillan, Clyde?s spiritual confidant, reluctantly turns down their personal plea for clemency. Clyde must die in the electric chair at Auburn. As he leaves his mother minutes before his death, Clyde tells her that God has calmed and strengthened him, but to himself he questions his claim. Accompanied by McMillan and guards, Clyde says good-bye to the prisoners he leaves behind on death row while he walks to the room where he is to die. Then, after the execution, An American Tragedy ends with a scene like that with which it began, only this time the place of the street preaching on a summer evening is San Francisco, not Kansas City, and Russell, the child born out of wedlock some years before to Clyde?s sister Esta, has taken Clyde?s place.

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