Američka tragedija

The novel "American Tragedy" is based on a real murder of a girl named Grace Brown. Who was killed by her lover, a sickly ambitious young man, because she was interfering with his social ascent. On the basis of that event, Dreiser built an extensive work and gave a broad panorama of American life in the first decades of this century. (the work was first published in 1925).

By portraying crime as the result of blind internal motivations and social circumstances, Dreiser caused stormy discussions with this, as well as some of his earlier novels (e.g. "Carrie", "Genius") and had problems with censorship. Like Zola, whom he took as a role model at the beginning of his literary creation, Dreiser tries to bring the characters he portrays to the fore as an objective observer, while he himself, as a writer, always remains in the background. His heroes, tragic in turn, are portrayed more as victims than as culprits, and for the crimes they committed, for their immorality and transgressions, Dreiser does not accuse them but the society that shaped them and often forced them to do such actions. Appearing in literature as a follower of Zola's naturalism, then accepting (in his "Genius", 1915) extremely Nietzschean ideas, Dreiser increasingly comes to the knowledge that the causes of all evil lie primarily in society itself, and takes a socialist position, which in » The American tragedy already quite distinctly. Even if his style is sometimes clumsy (which his opponents always emphasized in order to diminish the artistic value of his works). Dreiser is one of the greatest American writers of the first half of this century, and "American Tragedy", that novel that radiates some gloomy drama and undeniable tragic power, is among the most valuable works of American literature. Moreover, H. G. Welles, not without reason, always pointed out that it is one of the greatest novels of our century.