Dreiser thought, it was the society of America rather than the criminal that resulted in the tragic murder case. At that time, there were many young people, especially those from the countryside or the poor family with low status, dreaming of being rich and stepping into the upper class in order to achieve respect. This dream itself is ridiculous. 

2. Literature Review

Theodore Dreiser is a pioneer of American Modern novel, and he is also a representative of American Naturalism. He is a controversial figure in American literary history. His works are powerful in their portrayal of the changing American life, and he himself showed a new way of presenting reality especially in the reading of An American Tragedy. It is very worthwhile to make an in-deepth exploration into the novel. An American Tragedy has so far attracted many critics from various perspectives both at home and abroad. Among them, many critics are on analyzing the fate of Clyde and the causes of the tragedy of different characters. And some critics are mainly on analyzing the Naturalism applied in An American Tragedy.

Researchers abroad spoke highly of the Realism applied in the novel. Some of researchers studied the novel mainly from the Naturalism. And some paid attention to the writing style of journalistic method. There are also some researchers taking interest in the characterization in the novel. Diao Ruofei, Du Lei and Lv Hua read the novel with an aesthetic criticism and they thought: American Tragedy is a work of reality. It describes a real society during that time in America. When Clyde had been a famous character in the literary area, American had been undergoing a sharp change in a lot of areas like economy and politics. People’s mind had changed towards money and American Dream. When Zhang Hongyan, Dai Hongxia and Huyun read the novel, they paid attention to tragedy stereotype. They studied the character Clyde based on the criticism thesis of Frei’s stereotype. The stereotype of Clyde was born from Greek Tragedy which mainly was a tragedy of fate. And they also found the stereotype from Shakespeare’s works. They thought that the tragedy of Clyde could be a tragedy of his own life as well as a tragedy of American society. While some other researchers focused on the Naturalism in Theodore Dreiser novel. There were other people devoting themselves to the causes of occurrence of tragedy in Clyde’s life. Cao Xueqing made a research on the American Dream in American Dream. He regarded the distorted American Dream as one of the main causes of Clyde’s tragedy.   

However, no one exactly tells how to prevent such tragedy occurring again. In my opinion, since the problem existed, we should do our best to prevent this similar tragedy happening again. In some cases, we may not prevent such similar tragedy, however, we can minimize the chance of occurrence of such tragedy in today’s world.  

3. The Manifestation of Clyde’s Tragedy源[自*吹冰^`论\文"网·www.chuibin.com/

3.1 The Consistent Degeneration 

Clyde was born in a poor family and was forced to participate in their street missionary work. At his childhood, all the things were his family’s praise to God. In this environment, he should be loyal to God. But he didn’t. In this way, other people had an effect on Clyde. Each one wanted to be a member of a group and aspired to be accepted by others, it was natural to make relationships with others. However, at Clyde’s childhood, he can’t get such accept.” On more than one occasion, before he had been taken on the street in this fashion, other boys had called to him and made fun of his father.” Such experience made Clyde wanted to be accept and the only way was to get beautiful clothes first. It was also his first step to destruction. He wanted more money and then betrayed his flash and dignity to please consumers for tips. After he made some friends and met a brothel. Continually he had deviated on his way to enjoyed luxurious material life filled with wine and women. Happy time is not long. He stroke a girl caused her to death when he drove a car. Instead of confessing his crime, he fled away. The corruption in his virtue also implied his degeneration. The story ends with Clyde’s death because he was charged with murdering Robert that was his lover. He caused three deaths in his life. The first was the little girl and the second was Robert. The last cause was Clyde himself. Each death indicated Clyde’s degeneration and this degeneration was consistent.