Some fly
up, others fall.
Luring
lights of big cities have always been tempting aim for young and full of dreams
and hopes for the better life men.
Attracted by the cunning wiles, they are doomed to face a great number
of difficulties to get the desired or to slide into evil’s way sinking in grief
and mismatching morals deeds. The book I am going to interpret illustrates one
of stories that will never go out of fashion due to their common nature. The
book’s title Sister Carrie is used
literary as it cover’s time span of
several years of Carrie’s life and mostly tells about the twists and turns of
her life.
A young
eighteen-year old girl comes from a provincial town to Chicago to enjoy the
facilities of a big city as she hopes. From the very beginning it is told by
the author that she is not either clever or talented. Narrow minded and
concentrated on nice dresses, food and theatre. Her hopes falls beyond reality
as her sister’s family where she boards with is not prosperous enough to live
the life Carry has been dreaming about. At first Carry accepts the rules of the
game and dive into the steady round of toil, working hard for one fabric and
then another. Earned money can’t provide her with everything she needs, so that
when a handsome, intelligent(as she thought) and humorous commercial traveler
Drouet with whom she got acquainted in the train she came to the city, comes to
the scene, Carrie has already disappointed in the way of life she was leading. Justifiably,
her fall is accompanied by pricks of conscious, doubts and hesitations but in
the end, craving for well-fed life full of amusements wins. She spends next
couple of years as Drouet’s mistress until she met Hurstwood, the man older
than her, with fine position of a bar manager, stable income, polite and
intelligent, handsome and self-confident and…unfortunately married…he attracts
Carrie’s attention and almost abducts her by a cunning wile to Canada. He has
stolen money from the bar’s safe so they are actually running away from
Chicago. But soon he is caught by a private detective and sends the money back.
They move to New York where he comes down to a beggar and carry fly up to a
famous actress.
A
complicated plot of the story consists of several conflicts that can be united
into man against morality conflict. I would like to pay greater attention to the
most meaningful conflict that took place in Carrie’s life as it was the first
step on her way, that was condemned almost by everyone. The day Drouet sponsored
her with money to buy a new jacket and shoes and she accepts the gift is a
significant milestone of the girl’s life. She is excited and happy to get these
beautiful outfits but at the same time she is conscience-stricken. The night
that she is considering it over is the climax of her inner struggle of moral
principles that she was taught and her desires for prosperous life. “She went
over the tangle again and again. She began to be ashamed. The whole situation
depressed her.” Tortured by the dreadful feeling of being known as an easy to
access she decides to give the money back. “it was wrong to take it. she would
go down in the morning and hunt for work”. And indeed she being determined
finds strength to tell Drouet about her hesitations and refuses to take money.
But instead of being saved she is attacked from another side and offered to
change the flat to live with Drouet. She Is not ready for this and doesn’t have
a quick response and moreover she likes Drouet who is giving her a helping
hand. She agrees and run away from home. Thus the first fall is completed,
since this night she has never been that embarrassed, at a loss, and seeking
for morals.
Carry is criticized
for being too obsessed with the idea of getting money and becoming “a bird of
nice feather”, but isn’t it natural to long for enjoyable life without thoughts
how to make both ends meet? One more her grief is “changing men and using them to
her best advantage”. Well it is a debatable question as at first she is not
planning to leave Drouet and hopes to marry him, as he is constantly promising
her. Only after having understood the fact that he will never put his promise
into reality, she accepts Hurstwood who is dancing attendances on her in the
way Drouet never did. And by the ay
decides to break with him when she knows that he is married. The last and the
most heavy sin she is imputed is that she leaves Hurstwood when he needs her
help. I wonder who is philanthropic enough to provide a coming down man for all
his life, bearing his complains and naggings. By the way, Hurstwood is not as
holy as he seems to be. Kidnapping Carrie he acts not out of great scarifying
love, but out of desire for pleasures. It is not Carrie who uses men, it is men
who use Carrie. And moreover, this man
hasn’t done anything for her but teased with prosperous life, deceived and took
her to the city where both of them were doomed to hungry existence. Things that
are as clear as daylight turn to be not that simple. That’s why I think I like
Dreiser. There are nether positive nor negative characters in his books. All of
them have grounds to act in the way they act.
To be frank
enough, the book is a very oppressing one as it shows barely the fragility of
life. Characters lose and find, go up and down, face problems and find
solutions to them. But whatever they commit, there is a slight touch of despair.
The book makes think about opportunities and value of choices we make.
