Theodore Dreiser is a celebrated American novelist in the realistic period. What does he discuss in his novel? Give examples to prove your viewpoint.
Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be materialistic to the core. Living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late 19th century.
For example t in Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose status is not determined e- conomically. Sex is another human desire that Dreiser explored to considerable lengths in his novels to reveal the dark side of human nature. In Sister Carrie, Carrie climbs up the social ladder by means of her sexual appeal. Like all naturalists he was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings. (p526)
