An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy is a novel written by Theodore Dreiser and originally published in 1925.

Clyde Griffiths is a young boy who belongs to a very religious family, consisting of his parents, two sisters and a brother, who live very humbly in Kansas City in the 1920s.

The whole family works in "the mission," helping the poor and spreading God's message on the streets. Everyone participates, even Clyde, even though the young man hates it. They don't make any money at it, so they wear hand-me-down clothes and have few luxuries.

This means that as Clyde enters adolescence, he begins to compare himself to other boys his age and the differences between him and the others...

"Dusk—of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants—such walls as in time may linger as a mere fable..."