Abstract:
Sister Carrie has been called the quintessential modern American novel. Through its
characters and their story, it illustrates the effects of the changing economic structure
on American culture. My article’s main objective is to analyze how does Dreiser’s Naturalistic style be exposed through the character Carrie Meeber in Sister Carrie.
Sister Carrie tells the story of two characters: Carrie Meeber, an ordinary girl who rises
from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress, and George Hurstwood, a member of the upper middle class who falls from
his comfortable lifestyle to a life on the streets. Neither Carrie nor Hurstwood earn their
fates through virtue or vice, but rather through random circumstance. Their successes
and failures have no moral value; this stance marks Sister Carrie as a departure from the
conventional literature of the period.
Dreiser touches upon a wide range of themes and experiences in Sister Carrie, from
grinding poverty to upper-middle class comfort. The novel dwells on the moment as it is experienced; the characters
are plunged into the narrative without the reader being told much, if any, of their
histories. Their identities are constantly subject to change, reflecting the modern
American experience that had been ushered in by the developing capitalist economy.
In the process of this development, thousands of rural Americans rushed to the cities
to find jobs and to build themselves new lives and identities. Sister Carrie captures the excitement of that experience.
Keywords:
virtue , vice, random circumstance, ambitious, moral, tragic.