Introduction: style, legacy, origin of plot p. An American Tragedy The Resources That I Used Theodore Dreiser SYMBOLISM / MOTIFS / IMAGERY / SYMBOLS SHORT SUMMARY (Synopsis) Major Themes Minor Themes. It was based on the notorious murder of Grace Brown in 1906 and the trial of her lover. An American Masterpiece Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love for.

He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. Buy a cheap copy of An American Tragedy book by Theodore Dreiser. We will study the film in the last session. An American Tragedy is a 1925 novel by American writer Theodore Dreiser. The story has also been made into an opera and a film ( A Place in the Sun, 1951).

It was a watershed book that inspired the creation of a number of American tragedies - Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966), and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979) among others. It has often been called American's Crime and Punishment. The novel begins with Clyde’s blighted background, recounts his path to success, and culminates in his apprehension, trial, and execution for murder. Tracing the psychic and social consequences of inequality, An American Tragedy was voted into the 16th spot on the Modern Reader's Library Top 100 novels.īased on a thinly disguised true story, this important novel is not only a biting portrait of the American dream gone sour but also a universal story about the stresses of urbanization, modernization, and alienation. In the book, An American Tragedy, main character Clyde Griffiths is one of many who pine for the American dream. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, published in 1925, is a complex and compassionate account of the life and death of a young antihero named Clyde Griffiths.