Caveat: This is a full summary, short though it is. If you don't wish to know what happens, skip this part.

Carrie Meeber leaves her parents' home in a small town to go visit her sister and possibly seek her future in Chicago. On the bus, she meets a charming man, Drouet. Carrie finds a sweatshop job that she doesn't like. Moreover, most of whatever she earns she has to give to her sister's husband for her room and board.

Drouet pampers her and helps her, and Carrie flees from her sister's home to Drouet to become his mistress. While she's with Drouet, she falls for Drouet's acquaintance George Hurstwood, not knowing that Hurstwood is a married man.

Hurstwood steals money from where he works, and under false pretenses, makes Carrie come with him to Canada. After that the couple move to New York under an assumed name. They live together a few years in New York until Hurstwood loses his job and becomes despondent, unable to work again, even though he makes a few half-hearted attempts. By this time, the couple have lost interest in each other.

Carrie, moved by necessity, finds a job as a chorus girl on Broadway, and soon enough, makes a name for herself. Disgusted by Hurstwood's appearance and lack of initiative, she leaves him. Hurstwood, struggling with a dire need for money, becomes a homeless man, and at the end, commits suicide.

Eventually, Carrie becomes a theater star with all the material fineries she so loved, but she finds that she is still not content with her lot in the world.

The writer's in-depth look into the characters and his grasp of the society's changing values toward materialism.

The author's writing style, which was heavy with too long passages of philosophizing and unnecessary descriptions, even though some of the descriptions were brilliant. More than anything, it annoyed me that, during the heavy expository sections, the author entered into the story and moralized or explained his understanding of the situation. Maybe his style can be explained by the fact that this novel, Dreiser's first, was published in 1900.

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist. He was born on August 27, 1871 and died on December 28, 1945. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. Most of his work is available on the web.

as long as its reading takes, it still captures the reader's attention and makes him wonder what will happen next. Also, Dreiser mentions a wide range of concepts through several different themes like poverty, lavish living arrangements, the gap between the layers of society, man's inhumanity to man, greed, and misconception of human values. It also exhibits the changing economic structure and its effects on the American culture.

I read this novel on Kindle, but it can be purchased as a book, too. Several sites offer it as an e-book for free.
I rated the novel with my present-day understanding; however, the ratings are higher if the era in which the story was written and the story's historical significance is considered.

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Created Mar 11, 2011 at 4:03pm • Submit your own review...