When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly ...
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When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken. To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours-a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
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Dreiser's insight and understanding of human behavior becomes the bones of this profound look at the social / political machine churning under Capitalism. Extraordinary, powerful, demanding, attitude altering.
ninthchord
Aug 17, 2010
Masterful
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work--for me, the first time to read Dreiser besides one short story. I fond myself caring very much for Carrie (the poor lamb in the stone jungle) and wanting her to succeed. With her story, Dresier points out that success in Chicago or New York may mean alienation.
As for Hurstwood, as Carrie's star rockets, his fizzles out. The man, already in possession of the success that Carrie desires, seeks exactly what Carrie winds up losing, the affection of another. In seeking affection, he loses his family and his wealth.
Drouet, the typical dandy, escapes unscathed. Everything is appearance and show to him, and feelings are something one can don or discard.
Dreiser's only shortcoming is his tendency to become long-winded. He could have left out a few scenes that I found redundant.
