【正文】 【標(biāo)題】 嘉莉妹妹悲劇的原因 【作者】 馬青芬 【關(guān)鍵詞】 原因；嘉莉妹妹；悲??；資本主義；美國(guó)夢(mèng) 【指導(dǎo)老師】 趙洪尹 曾琳玲 【專業(yè)】 英語(yǔ) 【正文】 I. Introduction Theodore Herman Abler Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on August27, 1871. He is the twelfth of thirteen children. His gentle and devoted mother is illiterate。 his German immigrant father is severe and distant. In his lifetime Dreiser was controversial as a man and as a writer. He was accused, with some justice by conventional standards, of being immoral in his personal behavior, a poor thinker, and a dangerous political radical。 his style was said to be ponderous and his narrative sense weak. As time passes， however， Dreiser has been recognized as a profound and prescient critic of debased American values and as a powerful novelist. Sister Carrie, which traces the material rise of Carrie Member and the tragic decline of G. W. Hurstwood, was Dreiser’s first novel. Because it depicted social transgressions by characters he felt no remorse and largely escaped punishment, and because it used names of living persons, it was virtually suppressed by its publisher, who printed but refused to promote the book. Since its reissue in 1907, it has steadily risen in popularity and scholarly acceptance as one of the key works in the Dreiser’s canon. Indeed, though turnof – the century readers found Dreiser’s point of view crude and immoral, his influence on the fiction of the first quarter of the century is perhaps greater than any other writer’s. In the postCivil War years, America was in the unprecedented industrial expansion. Commerce took the lead in the national economy. Machines took the place of the traditional hand labor in factories and on farms. America had transformed from a largely agricultural country into an industrial and urban one. In the process of this development, thousands of rural Americans rush to the cities to find jobs and to build themselves new lives and identities. Sister Carrie captures the excitement of that experience. Dreiser described the sociological environment, especially the big city full of cunning wiles and temptation. Dreiser created three chief tragic images— Carrie, Drouet and Hurstwood. They were all victims of the social and economic forces. Drouet was a dimmer, the oute of capitalist society. He was vain, empty in spirit. He considered wealth the most important. In fact, he was a poor man without soul. Hurstwood was a typical egoist, sophisticated and apt to changing. These created environment for Carrie’s tragedy. In this paper, the author tends to analyze the causes of Sister Carrie’s tragedy from external and internal factors. II. External Causes A. Social Causes The American Dream had been one of the most ideal dreams throughout the world. At that time, everyone believes that through hard work, anyone can succeed. It has attracted millions of people to seek their dreams from all over the world. “American people, in e ven greater numbers, ceased to ‘labor in the earth’ and moved to towns and cities to labor on the machines of new industries.”1As a result, everywhere, people could see factory smoke and heard the clang of manufacturing. Industrialization was in full swing in a certain way, and really a lot of dreams had e true. However, when American history entered the transitional period, which was around the year 1900， the growth of business and industry worsened the conditions of the poverty, and gave rise to reform movements and labor unions that expressed the inequality of debtridden farmers and workers living in city slums and laboring in giant, impersonal factories. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity, people were suffering for unhappiness. Dissatisfaction and frustration were widely felt. Another sign that needed to be noticed was, by that time, the United States had been seen profound changes in its social values. A lust for money and power took the place of traditional values. The accumulation of wealth seemed to be at once the symbol and the source of social position. What’s more, though economy seemed to be booming everywhere, in the quarter century after 1873, all sectors of the economy were troubled by business failures, heightening petition, chronic overproduction and wage cuts, and widespread unemployment which brought about hardship, sometime starvation, for industrial workers. The rich were less vulnerable in different ways pared with those who struggled to make ends meet on a farm or worked for a wage. Therefore, obviously, economy was not as flourish as people had envisioned. Even the rich can lose their social position very quickly, not to mention the mon people. “What had been expected to be a ‘Golden Age’ turned out to be Mark Twain’s ‘Gilded’ one” 2 The means of realizing American Dream deviated from its original track, so there appeared an abnormal phenomenon, that is, if you wanted to make your ideal dream e true, you had to do something immoral. Sister Carrie was a shadow of American society. So Carrie’s remarks, actions, and changes can never be separated from the society. For lack of personal discretion， she couldn’t reject a lust for money. We saw the inevitable function of economy on her growth. Talking about Sister Carrie, Bell pointed out, Carrie’s experience matters not bec