Abstract
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), in his novel An American Tragedy (1925), relates the personal history of a young man who is confronted with a series of crises. After much thoughtful reflection, Dreiser’s protagonist makes a number of perfectly rational and acceptable decisions regarding how to most appropriately deal with each conflict as it arises. The decisions he makes seem to the reader to be nearly unavoidable, and with great subtlety, the reader is led to concur with each decision. Regrettably, the choices made lead the youth to moral and financial ruin quite rapidly and inextricably. We, as the readers who agreed with the correctness of each of the youth’s decisions, are swept, sympathetically at least, to the same destination.
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Leonard, R.D. (1993). The Persistence of an Explanatory Dilemma in Contact Period Studies. In: Rogers, J.D., Wilson, S.M. (eds) Ethnohistory and Archaeology. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1115-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1115-5_3
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