SOURCE: St. Jean, Shawn. “Social Deconstruction and An American Tragedy.” Dreiser Studies 28, no. 1 (spring 1997): 3-24.

In the following essay, St. Jean explores how a deconstructionist approach to Dreiser's An American Tragedy illuminates his focus on the relativism of truth in the novel.

Of all major aspects of his work, Theodore Dreiser's social criticism is perhaps the most elusive and has therefore received the least sustained critical attention. It cannot be called obvious at any level, else readers would not be forced to wonder over such basic issues as whether a book like The Financier (1912) is a celebration or an indictment of capitalism. We know of “Dreiser's full endorsement of the Communist party and its goals from the early 1930s to his death in 1945” (Pizer, Cambridge 12), and with almost equal surety accept the historical truism that “During the twenties … the act of rejection of American cultural codes and economic...