Abstract and Key Words

Abstract ：The paper aims to point out the tragedy of Clyde who is the hero of Dreiser’s novel American Tragedy. It first introduces the life and works of Dreiser, as well as the background of “American Dream”. In the second part, it analyzes the process from Clyde’s pursuit for “American Dream” till the disillusion of it. The paper then discusses the factors that lead to the “American tragedy”, that is Clyde’s weak personality, the social background, and the nature of “American Dream”. In conclusion, Clyde's tragedy is both the tragedy of an individual and the tragedy of the American society.

Key words: American tragedy, Clyde, “American Dream”,Tragedy

摘要： 本论文的主旨是分析德莱赛的小说《美国悲剧》中的主人公克莱德的悲剧。文章首先介绍了作者的生平、作品，以及“美国梦”的大背景，接着展示了克莱德“美国梦”的形成及破灭的过程，随后分析了造成他梦想破灭的原因即克莱德自身的性格弱点和当时的社会环境以及“美国梦”本身虚幻的本质。综上所述，克莱德的悲剧不仅仅是其自身的悲剧，更是美国社会的悲剧。

关键词: 《美国悲剧》，克莱德，美国梦, 悲剧

1. Introduction
Dreiser was the ninth of 10 surviving children in a poor family. His father, a German immigrant, was a mostly unemployed mill worker. His mother's gentle and compassionate outlook sprang from her Czech Mennonite background. In later life Dreiser would bitterly associate religion with his father's ineffectuality and the family's resulting material deprivation, but he always spoke and wrote of his mother with unswerving affection. Dreiser's own harsh experience of poverty as a youth and his early yearnings for wealth and success would become dominant themes in his novels, and the misadventures of his brothers and sisters in early adult life gave him additional material on which to base his characters. Dreiser's spotty education in parochial and public schools was capped by a year (1889–90) at Indiana University. He began a career as a newspaper reporter in Chicago in 1892 and worked his way to the East Coast. In 1894 Dreiser arrived in New York City, where he worked for several newspapers and contributed to magazines. He married Sara White in 1898. The couple separated permanently in 1912.
Dreiser began writing his first novel, Sister Carrie, in 1899 at the suggestion of a newspaper colleague, which was published in the following year. But the story line of which involves a young woman whose “immorality” goes unpunished, led the publisher to limit the book's advertising, and consequently it sold fewer than 500 copies. This disappointment sent Dreiser into a suicidal depression from which he was rescued in 1901 by his brother, Paul Dreiser, a well-known songwriter. Dreiser recovered his spirits, and in the next nine years he achieved notable financial success as an editor in chief of several women's magazines. He was forced to resign in 1910, however, because of an office imbroglio involving his romantic fascination with an assistant's daughter.