An Analysis Of An American Tragedy From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

An American Tragedy is one of the masterpieces of Theodore Dreiser, based on a real murder in New York State in 1906. It tells the story of Clyde Griffiths, the son of street evangelists, who under the influence of materialism and money worship, gets lost in the pursuing of material comforts and personal pleasures, and becomes a cruel murderer in the end. With a vivid description of the protagonist Clyde and Roberta's brief lives, this novel reveals the young generation's corruption and destruction exerted by the social atmosphere, life style and moral orientation during the transition period of society.This thesis, by applying Professor Nie Zhenzhao's ethical literary criticism, mainly makes a research on how the young generation represented by Clyde and Roberta goes toward self-destruction in the transitional period of America, by analyzing this text from the following three aspects, namely, the ethical context in the 1920s, the transformation process of the protagonist Clyde's Sphinx Factor and Roberta's ethical confusion. The growing gap between the rich and the poor resulted from an unprecedented prosperity of American economy, as well as the prevailing of consumer culture and hedonism, made the American people doubted about the traditional ethics and morality, hence they no longer adhered to the traditional ethical norms Born into a family of the lower class, Clyde is deeply influenced by the traditional ethics. However, when facing with the material temptation and sexual desire, Clyde's ethical morality starts to degenerate. His desire to reset his ethical identity gradually makes himself trapped in the ethical dilemma and finally leads to his tragedy. Meanwhile, the heroine, Roberta, driven by vanity and personal desire, falls in love with Clyde. She treats Clyde as the tool to change her fate and life. In her ethical choices, she breaks the ethical order, violates the traditional ethics and moral code, and gradually falls into the ethical embarrassment of premarital pregnancy. In the end, she is murdered.In a word, An American tragedy is not only a tragedy about family, love, law, politics and religion, but in essence an ethical tragedy, with rich ethical connotation. The tragedies of Clyde and Roberta are, in essence, the ethical tragedies, aiming to embody the significance of traditional moral norms and ethical order in the course of ethical choices.