1 / 5

The Road I Come

The Road I Come. Oh space! Change! Toward which we run So gladly, Or from which we retreat In terror — Yet that promises to bear us In itself Forever. Oh, what is this That knows the road I came? --Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).

laura-solomon
Download Presentation

The Road I Come

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Road I Come • Oh space! • Change! • Toward which we run • So gladly, • Or from which we retreat • In terror— • Yet that promises to bear us • In itself • Forever. • Oh, what is this • That knows the road I came? --Theodore Dreiser

  2. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) • Considered by many as the leader of Naturalism in American writing • is also remembered for his stinging criticism of the genteel tradition and of what Howells described as the "smiling aspects of life" typifying America.

  3. Major Achievements • Sister Carrie (1900)—a classic naturalistic novel, challenging the American myth that honesty and hard work inevitably lead to success. • Jennie Gerhardt (1911) • An American Tragedy (1925)—both a critical and commercial success. • “The Trilogy of Desire”: The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947)

  4. His point of view • The most important influence on Dreiser’s outlook came from Darwinism and Herbert Spenser’s Social Darwinism. • In Dreiser’s view, man is a “victim of forces over which he has no control”. • To him, life is “so sad, so strange, so mysterious and so inexplicable”, and human tragedy comes as a result of the collisions between man’s biological needs and society’s ruthless manipulation.

  5. His Style • His style is considered crude (not refined) • He lacks concision, his writings appear more inclusive and less selective, and the readers are sometimes burdened with massive detailed descriptions of characters and events. • He has been always accused of being awkward in sentence structure, inept and occasionally wrong in word selection and meaning, and mixed and disorganized in voice and tone. • For him language is a means of communication rather than an art form.

More Related