Theodore Dreiser Essays (Examples)

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Dreiser's "Second Choice" jolts Shirley out of her "lower-middle-class complacency by Arthur, a dashing, romantic newcomer who woos, wins, and leaves her. Love, Shirley suddenly finds, is excitement, defined by Arthur as freedom, movement, exploration," and a different way of being in the world (Harris 73). hen Arthur leaves her, instead of using this reinvigorated sense of purpose to change her own life, her inability to win Arthur causes Shirley to regard "herself as a failure because in his eyes, she is worthless" (Harris 73). Shirley engages in an act of self-punishment, forcing herself to settle for a "steady, phlegmatic suitor, and resume the life she had abandoned when Arthur appeared. 'hat's the use?'" she asks herself (Harris 73). Dreiser does not endorse this sense of ineffectualness, merely depicts it as a sad warning to the reader as something that is, like the town itself, "commonplace." By showing the….

characters in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. The writer of this paper provides an insight to the things leading to the eventual outcome of Carrie and Hurstwood. The writer uses examples from the book to underscore the paths each life takes and explain why they each end up the way they do. There was one source used to complete this paper.
Many times fiction imitates real life with a hint of reality and truth that are amazing. The characters within the stories written are believable and cause the reader to feel emotions for their plights. There are many classics that provide a foundational understanding and empathy for the characters in the book, and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie is one example of such work. The novel depicts the lives of two very different people, Hurstwood and Carrie who come from different worlds. As the book unfolds the two characters transform their lives….

Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser, and "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Specifically, it will determine what each character's value system is by asking what things are most important to her and what things or values she spends most of the time seeking. Each of these characters has strong and determined values that guide them through their lives. These values are at the core of their being, and help the characters become real and compelling in the readers' mind. One character's values bring her contentment, while the other's do not, and this is the key difference between these two women and their values. One has values to be applauded, while the other has values that leave her wanting.
Antonia in "My Antonia" is a child of the land. She values life in the country and family, and these values stick with her throughout her life. She notes, "I'm a country girl...and….

Financier written by Theodore Dreiser traces the personal and financial life of a fictional financier from the time of Andrew Jackson's administration through the aftermath of the "Great Fire" in Chicago in 1871. This essay identifies three problems in the public financing area that negatively impacted public interest and highlights the rules and organizations that have been created to reduce the probability of these three problems recurring. All three problems resulted from the city of Philadelphia's method used to raise funds. The system penalized small businessmen and benefited large merchants as well as banks and brokers. The people and organizations that knew the city politicians the best received the greatest income from the financing method. When it became necessary to change the funding method, the large merchants, bankers, and brokers attempted to generate even more income.
The problems began prior to the Civil War and continued during and after the….

Gender as Performance
Theodore Dreiser's 1900 novel Sister Carrie is in style and tone in many ways radically different from Edith harton's The House of Mirth, published just five years later. And yet there is in both works a similar core, what might be called a parallel moral, for both novels explore the ways in which gender is performative in the two societies that we learn about within the world of each novel. hile, of course, in many ways gender is what we are born with, it is also just as clearly for these two writers (as it would be for any anthropologist) part of the performance of self, the way in which each person in these books presents herself or himself both to the world at large as well as internally. Both novels allows the authors to tell a compelling story while simultaneously exploring the gender roles expected of both….

Huck and Jim
PAGES 2 WORDS 665

Narrator
In many ways, the literary movements and philosophies of determinism and individualism are opposites of one another. Determinism is one of the facets of Naturalism, and is based on the idea that things happen due to causes and effects largely out of the control of people and that choice is ultimately an illusion. Individualism, however, is widely based on the idea of free will and the fact that people can take action to control their surroundings and their fates in life. Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie provides an excellent example of determinist literature and is based on the critical ideas of amorality and environmental factors controlling a person's fate, while Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an example of individualism and illustrates the idea that a person can take action to make his or her own fate.

Dreiser's work chronicles the rise to wealth and social prominence of Carrie Meeber….

Sister Carrie and a Modern Instance and discusses the characters geographic attempts to escape their problems. The writer compares and contrasts the stories and argues that social norms continue to follow the characters wherever they go. There were two sources used to complete this paper.
Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie and illiam Dean Howells' A Modern Instance are classic examples of the way people try and change their personalities and their lives by geographic changes. Both of the stories test the belief that greater mobility translates into greater freedom as well as address whether social norms follow the people or if social norms are changed in new environments.

Throughout history authors of literature have used their work to convey messages. Sometimes the message is open and blunt while at other times it is a subtle hint of idea that promotes the message. In the two classic stories of change and move Sister….

Obscenity and Indecency
PAGES 5 WORDS 1591

BOOKSORE OWNER v. SAE OF INDIANA
Obscenity and Indecency

IN HE COUR OF APPEALS OF INDIANA

BOOKSORE OWNER

Appellant-Petitioner,

SAE OF INDIANA,

Appellee-Respondent.

APPEAL FROM HE S. JOSEPH SUPERIOR COUR

he Honorable John. R. Doe, Judge

MEMORANDUM DECISION -- NO FOR PUBLICAION

Student's Name, Judge

Case Summary

Petitioner bookstore owner was found by a jury to be guilty of obscenity when she sold the book he Genius, written by heodore Dreiser, to the public. Respondents argued successfully in Superior Court that the passage in question was obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Petitioner appeals the decision under the claim that the book in its entirety has redeeming social value and is therefore protected by the First Amendment.

Issues

he issues before the Court are whether the lower court erred when it allowed the passage in question to be considered obscene or not in isolation from the rest of the material contained in the book, thereby precluding the jury from considering the….

LITEATUE Literature: The Determinist PhilosophyThe determinist philosophy is about the life events that stem from previous causes and reasons before the actual event. They could be in the form of overlapping desires or motivations of humans that lead to certain results or consequences in life. This philosophy is evident in Theodore Dreisers Sister Carrie, illustrated with plot events examples.Since Carrie was nave and inexperienced but passionate, her desire to leave her place with her unconscious illusion of happiness allowed her to reach urban lifestyles. The environmental factors and her intrinsic nature and factors of personality took her to what she desired: money, beauty, fame, and social prominence.In contrast, Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows a clear example of individualism, and that person makes his own decisions that would lead him to his final consequences. Huckleberrys own decision to fake his death to get out of being civilized. His….

Real America?
Interestingly enough, one of the themes in the post-modernism period of American history has been the reexamination of the "real America," particularly the moral, ethical and sexual changes that have evolved since the turn of the century. This has not been a new theme, nor has it been relegated to non-fiction. At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding the role fiction took by examining high and low life in society. Edith harton, for instance, found tremendous hypocrisy within the ranks of the Eastern elite in terms of morality and sexuality and in Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser portrayed a country girl who moved to the big city of Chicago to become a "kept woman," relinquishing her American morals for the pleasures of the flesh. Similarly, even in the stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway there are notions and reexaminations of….

Emile Zola and the Movies
The translation of any work of literature into another medium, even one apparently so closely aligned with the written word as film, is always a chancy proposition. While literature and film focus themselves on the same targets within the minds of their audiences; that of completing an organic connection between the conception and the reception of an idea, the very natures of the two disciplines demand different things of the person who is reading or watching the material. As exciting and enveloping as the best film experience may be, it is still, in its essence a passive experience; every action is already determined, "painted," and set in celluloid by the filmmaker. On the other hand, literature demands much more of its audience. Even when a writer devotes paragraphs to descriptions of various characters or activities, the reader still plays an integral part in the final realization….

Man Who Almost Was a Man," by Richard Wright, explains how the non-literary dimension changes one's understanding of the story.
The Man Who Was Almost a Man"

Richard Wright was one of the greatest African-American writers; he was also the first African-American to have produced one of the famous novel of racism and its psychological affect on the individuals in his masterpiece "Native on." Born in 1908 in Mississippi, Wright father left the family when he was only six years old and when he was ten his mother had a paralytic stroke and was unable to work. Wright after a formal education was forced to seek employment in order to support his family. The first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period for the African-Americans, the discrimination against them had taken a different form and shape and there were little jobs available for the black people. Wright worked for….

American Literature
The development of the major ideas and attitudes expressed in Modern American literatures since 1900 can start with the realist school of literature, which focused on representing in naturalistic terms and concepts the life of the world around. Thus, Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie about a bumpkin country girl who moves to the big city and becomes a mistress. Stehpen Crane also portrayed the street life and Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle about what it was like to work in the meat packing plants at the time and how difficult it was for immigrant life. The ideas here were focused on revealing real American life -- not in broad comedy like a Mark Twain novel -- but in serious terms.

F. Scott Fitzgerald reflected the concept of "wasted youth" and the obsession with riches and power that was all so meaningless in the greater scheme of things in works like….

American Lit
Definition of Modernism and Three Examples

Indeed, creating a true and solid definition of modernism is exceptionally difficult, and even most of the more scholarly critical accounts of the so-called modernist movement tend to divide the category into more or less two different movements, being what is known as "high modernism," which reflected the erudition and scholarly experimentalism of Eliot, Joyce, and Pound, and the so-called "low modernism" of later American practitioners, such as William Carlos Williams. Nonetheless, despite the problems of reification involved with such a task, I will attempt to invoke a definitions of at least some traits of modernism, as culled from the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:

First, [in modernism] "realization" had to replace description, so that instead of copying the external world the work could render it in an image insisting on its own forms of reality... [and] Second, the poets develop collage techniques for….

1080). Editha wants to turn George into someone just like herself, who shares her same passion, beliefs, and patriotism -- someone who wouldn't hesitate to go off to war. As Bellamy (1979) states, Editha's commitment to marry him is "contingent upon his enlistment" (p. 283). Unless George becomes like her, she intends to cut of her engagement to him, exhibiting power over the relationship and expressing and asserting her own ideals. Once George commits and enlists, he becomes someone Editha can idolize: "I've been thinking, and worshipping you….I've followed you every step from your old theories and opinions'" (p. 1085). In her letters she includes what "she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him" (p. 1086). What she imagines are the things she would want to hear about herself. George has become someone she would like to be.
After George's death in battle, his mother tells Editha directly….

image
1 Pages
Essay

Literature

Theodore Dreiser - The Second

Words: 470
Length: 1 Pages
Type: Essay

Dreiser's "Second Choice" jolts Shirley out of her "lower-middle-class complacency by Arthur, a dashing, romantic newcomer who woos, wins, and leaves her. Love, Shirley suddenly finds, is excitement,…

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image
4 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Characters in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie The

Words: 1362
Length: 4 Pages
Type: Term Paper

characters in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. The writer of this paper provides an insight to the things leading to the eventual outcome of Carrie and Hurstwood. The writer…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser and My

Words: 1118
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser, and "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. Specifically, it will determine what each character's value system is by asking what things are most important…

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2 Pages
Term Paper

Economics

Financier Written by Theodore Dreiser Traces the

Words: 932
Length: 2 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Financier written by Theodore Dreiser traces the personal and financial life of a fictional financier from the time of Andrew Jackson's administration through the aftermath of the "Great…

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10 Pages
Term Paper

Sports - Women

Theatricality in Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Wharton's the House of Mirth

Words: 2818
Length: 10 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Gender as Performance Theodore Dreiser's 1900 novel Sister Carrie is in style and tone in many ways radically different from Edith harton's The House of Mirth, published just five years…

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2 Pages
Book Report

Literature

Huck and Jim

Words: 665
Length: 2 Pages
Type: Book Report

Narrator In many ways, the literary movements and philosophies of determinism and individualism are opposites of one another. Determinism is one of the facets of Naturalism, and is based on…

Read Full Paper  ❯
image
5 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Sister Carrie and a Modern Instance and

Words: 1326
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Sister Carrie and a Modern Instance and discusses the characters geographic attempts to escape their problems. The writer compares and contrasts the stories and argues that social norms…

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5 Pages
Discussion Chapter

Business - Law

Obscenity and Indecency

Words: 1591
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Discussion Chapter

BOOKSORE OWNER v. SAE OF INDIANA Obscenity and Indecency IN HE COUR OF APPEALS OF INDIANA BOOKSORE OWNER Appellant-Petitioner, SAE OF INDIANA, Appellee-Respondent. APPEAL FROM HE S. JOSEPH SUPERIOR COUR he Honorable John. R. Doe, Judge MEMORANDUM DECISION…

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1 Pages
Essay

Literature

The Determinist Philosophy Literature

Words: 343
Length: 1 Pages
Type: Essay

LITEATUE Literature: The Determinist PhilosophyThe determinist philosophy is about the life events that stem from previous causes and reasons before the actual event. They could be in the form…

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image
13 Pages
Book Review

Women's Issues - Sexuality

Real America Interestingly Enough One of the

Words: 4206
Length: 13 Pages
Type: Book Review

Real America? Interestingly enough, one of the themes in the post-modernism period of American history has been the reexamination of the "real America," particularly the moral, ethical and sexual…

Read Full Paper  ❯
image
15 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Emile Zola and the Movies the Translation

Words: 4466
Length: 15 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Emile Zola and the Movies The translation of any work of literature into another medium, even one apparently so closely aligned with the written word as film, is always a…

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image
6 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Man Who Almost Was a Man by

Words: 2251
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Man Who Almost Was a Man," by Richard Wright, explains how the non-literary dimension changes one's understanding of the story. The Man Who Was Almost a Man" Richard Wright was…

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image
2 Pages
Essay

Plays

Development of Ideas in American Literature Since 1900

Words: 706
Length: 2 Pages
Type: Essay

American Literature The development of the major ideas and attitudes expressed in Modern American literatures since 1900 can start with the realist school of literature, which focused on representing in…

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image
13 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

American Lit Definition of Modernism and Three

Words: 3585
Length: 13 Pages
Type: Term Paper

American Lit Definition of Modernism and Three Examples Indeed, creating a true and solid definition of modernism is exceptionally difficult, and even most of the more scholarly critical accounts of the…

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image
4 Pages
Essay

Sports - Women

Traditional Woman and the New

Words: 1160
Length: 4 Pages
Type: Essay

1080). Editha wants to turn George into someone just like herself, who shares her same passion, beliefs, and patriotism -- someone who wouldn't hesitate to go off to…

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