SOURCE: "Theodore Dreiser and the Criminal Justice System in An American Tragedy," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 22, No. 4, Winter, 1990, pp. 429-40.

In the following essay, Trigg examines Dreiser's portrayal of the American criminal justice system as inherently unfair in An American Tragedy.

At the end of Book Two of An American Tragedy, the central character, Clyde, and we, the readers, feel a sense of completion. For over 500 pages (1948 edition) Clyde's life has built to the event that caps Book Two: the drowning (maybe murder) of Roberta. Theodore Dreiser has taken the reader through all the stages of Clyde's "education": his youth in an evangelical family, his years as a bellhop learning the values of that materialistic group, his slow ascent into management in his uncle's collar factory, his intimate relationship and gradual boredom with Roberta, his involvement with Lycurgus society, and his love for the rich Sondra...