Dreiser’s ‘An American Tragedy’ is the tale of Clyde Griffiths, a boy in his pursuit of the promise of the American Dream working his way up in the capitalist society of 1920s America. With tones of the high life of ‘The Great Gatsby’, the book more so reminded me of the struggle under capitalism presented in Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ as Clyde devotes himself to the industrial world in search of riches and love. The book is split into three sections, and with its length it builds up slowly and as soon as I reached the tension of the first part it ended and the scene changes, immediately killing momentum again. That was one of the main struggles of this tome, it was brilliantly paced in the final 100 pages and really engaging, partly because of a better structuring and partly because of my determination to finish with the end in sight, though the chapters were quite short hence it was very easy to put down during reading sessions resulting in me ploughing through it very slowly. 

For a long while, I was waiting for the tragedy. I was tracking Clyde on his rise as a tragic hero and anticipating the fall, and that did come although at this point Clyde as a protagonist was extremely dislikable. He is self-entitled, spoilt and completely unfaithful across his multiple flings with women that make up the motivations of his character and the plot. It was when the tragic fall did come however, myself now rooting for Clyde’s downfall, that I realise the ‘American Tragedy’ is not Clyde’s tragedy, and that realisation was powerful. 

Dreiser wrote a certainly memorable novel, with a protagonist that’ll really split opinions and has so many layers to him, but his pacing was off for the most part of the book. In all my past ‘big books’ I have undertaken I have either loved them or really hated them, and for the first time there’s one that slots quite comfortably into the middle of the pack.