Literature Review

Up to now, an immense number of studies on the novel An American Tragedy have been implemented based on those perspectives, such as Naturalism, Consumerism and Feminism. However, only the Freudian psychoanalysis on An American Tragedy keeps track of the society.

Studies on Dreiser and An American Tragedy

In foreign countries, the earlier assessments about Dreiser and An American Tragedy play the important role to help readers to understand Dreiser and the cultural background, but they neglect the specificity of the work and the dominant role it plays. With the development of literary study, in the middle of the twentieth century, the study on Dreiser has turned into the study of the text. However, this approach develops into the other extreme: the text analysis has already excluded the historical and social system. Until the 1980s, hundreds of methods of various schools on Dreiser's work has sprung up, such as Freud's psychoanalysis, Feminism, Post - Structuralism, which has made the study of the novel deeper in structure, wider in connotation. For example, Aileen Covermou#8217;s work Naturalistic Strength(1994) has pointed out that "Dreiser's novels created the subjectivity through the role playing". The contemporary critic Luis Zanen in his work Mechanical Materialism and Mysticism: The Influence of Science on Theodore Dreiser#8217;s Thoughts and Works(1993) profoundly analyzes the naturalism and mysticism tension in Dreiser#8217;s work, but it has merely indicated that Dreiser#8217;s thoughts can derive from Transcendentalism, Quaker thought and India Philosophy.

In China, the well-renowned professor and foreign culture translator, Xu Ruzhi, a famous scholar who has translated An American Tragedy, initiates to study this novel and the author Dreiser. In his theses Brief Comment on Dreiser(1984) and The Transition of Dreiser Study, he believes that Dreiser connected the background of Clyde#8217;s life to the time when the capitalism dominated the society and the socialism was frail. The capitalistic time of Dreiser were full of hedonism, egoism and materialism, with which almost every one live for his own lust, so we can see the reasons why Dreiser wrote such kind of tragedy caused by a great number of social crimes, such as murders, rape, and corruption. To some extent, professor Xu#8217;s study on An American Tragedy sets the root on the background of Dreiser#8217;s life. On the whole, the domestic researches on Dreiser and his work are lack of a longitudinal comparison of consciousness, and many of them are restricted to the specific text analysis. According to Jiang Daochao(his book, Study on Dreiser,2003),to find out the evolution of Dreiser#8217;s techniques and themes in the whole writing progress, the study on Dreiser#8217;s novel should be conducted by applying the method of the combination between cultural criticisms and text analyses.

Limitations in Theories of the Studies

For a long time, due to Dreiser#8217;s particularity, some limitations exist in the studies on Dreiser#8217; s works home and abroad:

First of all, some studies on Dreiser#8217;s works mainly focus on the moral issues: the protagonist should be condemned and punished. For instance, the psychological activity that Clyde wanted to the pregnant woman Robert for pursuing the wealth and beauty of the blue-blooded lady Sondra. Secondly, about Dreiser#8217;s literary technique, critics tend to define it as Realism or Naturalism. Last but not least, some criticisms generally attribute Dreiser#8217;s works to the prevailing darkness and materialism in American capitalistic society. Even if some of those are the subjects of studies, few can reveal the real and complete connotation in Dreiser#8217;s novels, especially An American Tragedy.

Accordingly, to avoid the misunderstanding of Dreiser, Professor Jiang Daochao points out the reasonable method that we should study the different connotations of Dreiser#8217;s different works in a dialectical way, and research the course of Dreiser#8217;s thought under the consciousness of the development and the meticulous spirit of text analysis.

The Freudian Psychoanalytic Interpretation of An American Tragedy

As Dreiser has spent a long time studying Freud#8217;s theories, it is likely to ascribe the evil roots of tragic life to the humanity. Besides, in today#8217;s complicated society, people have to focus on the evolution of humanity that exert significant influence on the development of human civilization. Hence, some scholars, especially in China, hold that the protagonist Clyde#8217;s tragedy results from the imbalance among id, ego and superego in his personal structure.