《美国的悲剧AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY》
作者：西奥多·德莱塞
内容简介：
本书讲述了主人公克莱德·格里菲思受到社会上邪恶影响，逐渐蜕变、堕落为凶杀犯、最后自我毁灭的故事。
小说共分三卷。故事取材于一起发生在美国纽约的真实刑事案件，男主人公克莱德·格里菲思也是以真实人物为原型而创作的。克莱德成长于一个贫穷潦倒的宗教家庭，沿街传教为生。年少轻狂的克莱德在堪萨斯城一家豪华酒店担任服务生，因交友不慎，终日沉湎酒色不可自拔。 为了避祸，克莱德前往纽约投奔叔父，并与纯洁善良的贫穷女工罗伯塔·奥尔登相恋。后来，克莱德又结识了美丽的千金小姐桑德拉·芬奇利，这足以让他摆脱贫贱，跻身上流世界。不久，罗伯塔怀有身孕，甚至要求与克莱德秘密结婚。选择穷女工还是富家女？无奈之下，克莱德萌生了谋杀罗伯塔的念头，却在关键时刻发生动摇。不料事不遂愿，女工却在此时意外身亡。
随后，克莱德落入法网，面临裁决。美国正在举行大选，剑指大法官一职的检察官给调查人员施压，要求力证克莱德是凶手。经历助理捏造证据、律师大笔捞钱之后，克莱德仍难逃电椅之刑。上帝救不了他，父母仍在贬斥世俗的物欲，颂扬上帝之仁慈。究竟是美国梦，还是美国悲剧？这部小说将给你答案。
小说深刻展示了20世纪初美国人金钱至上、欲望膨胀的生活观和普遍的幻灭感。1929年，小说因妓女性行为描写而被判违反马萨诸萨州反淫秽书籍法令，并遭到查禁，这就是“公诉人诉弗雷德案”（唐纳德·弗雷德是一位纽约出版商）。
Title: An American Tragedy (1925)
Author: Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
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.
And up the broad street, now comparatively hushed, a little band
of six,--a man of about fifty, short, stout, with bushy hair
protruding from under a round black felt hat, a most unimportant-
looking person, who carried a small portable organ such as is
customarily used by street preachers and singers. And with him a
woman perhaps five years his junior, taller, not so broad, but
solid of frame and vigorous, very plain in face and dress, and yet
not homely, leading with one hand a small boy of seven and in the
other carrying a Bible and several hymn books. With these three,
but walking independently behind, was a girl of fifteen, a boy of
twelve and another girl of nine, all following obediently, but not
too enthusiastically, in the wake of the others.
It was hot, yet with a sweet languor about it all.
Crossing at right angles the great thoroughfare on which they
walked, was a second canyon-like way, threaded by throngs and
vehicles and various lines of cars which clanged their bells and
made such progress as they might amid swiftly moving streams of
traffic. Yet the little group seemed unconscious of anything save
a set purpose to make its way between the contending lines of
traffic and pedestrians which flowed by them.
Having reached an intersection this side of the second principal
thoroughfare--really just an alley between two tall structures--now
quite bare of life of any kind, the man put down the organ, which
the woman immediately opened, setting up a music rack upon which
she placed a wide flat hymn book. Then handing the Bible to the
man, she fell back in line with him, while the twelve-year-old boy
put down a small camp-stool in front of the organ. The man--the
father, as he chanced to be--looked about him with seeming wide-
eyed assurance, and announced, without appearing to care whether he
had any auditors or not:
"We will first sing a hymn of praise, so that any who may wish to
acknowledge the Lord may join us. Will you oblige, Hester?"
At this the eldest girl, who until now had attempted to appear as
unconscious and unaffected as possible, bestowed her rather slim
and as yet undeveloped figure upon the camp chair and turned the
leaves of the hymn book, pumping the organ while her mother
observed:
"I should think it might be nice to sing twenty-seven tonight--'How
Sweet the Balm of Jesus' Love.'"
By this time various homeward-bound individuals of diverse grades
and walks of life, noticing the small group disposing itself in
this fashion, hesitated for a moment to eye them askance or paused
to ascertain the character of their work. This hesitancy,
construed by the man apparently to constitute attention, however
mobile, was seized upon by him and he began addressing them as
though they were specifically here to hear him.
"Let us all sing twenty-seven, then--'How Sweet the Balm of Jesus'
Love.'"
At this the young girl began to interpret the melody upon the
organ, emitting a thin though correct strain, at the same time
joining her rather high soprano with that of her mother, together
with the rather dubious baritone of the father. The other children
piped weakly along, the boy and girl having taken hymn books from
the small pile stacked upon the organ. As they sang, this
nondescript and indifferent street audience gazed, held by the
peculiarity of such an unimportant-looking family publicly raising
its collective voice against the vast skepticism and apathy of
life. Some were interested or moved sympathetically by the rather
tame and inadequate figure of the girl at the organ, others by the
impractical and materially inefficient texture of the father, whose
weak blue eyes and rather flabby but poorly-clothed figure bespoke
more of failure than anything else. Of the group the mother alone
stood out as having that force and determination which, however
blind or erroneous, makes for self-preservation, if not success in
life. She, more than any of the others, stood up with an ignorant,
yet somehow respectable air of conviction. If you had watched her,
her hymn book dropped to her side, her glance directed straight
before her into space, you would have said: "Well, here is one
who, whatever her defects, probably does what she believes as
nearly as possible." A kind of hard, fighting faith in the wisdom
and mercy of that definite overruling and watchful power which she
proclaimed, was written in her every feature and gesture.
"The love of Jesus saves me whole,
The love of God my steps control,"
she sang resonantly, if slightly nasally, between the towering
walls of the adjacent buildings.
The boy moved restlessly from one foot to the other, keeping his
eyes down, and for the most part only half singing. A tall and as
yet slight figure, surmounted by an interesting head and face--
white skin, dark hair--he seemed more keenly observant and
decidedly more sensitive than most of the others--appeared indeed
to resent and even to suffer from the position in which he found
himself. Plainly pagan rather than religious, life interested him,
although as yet he was not fully aware of this. All that could be
truly said of him now was that there was no definite appeal in all
this for him. He was too young, his mind much too responsive to
phases of beauty and pleasure which had little, if anything, to do
with the remote and cloudy romance which swayed the minds of his
mother and father.
Indeed the home life of which this boy found himself a part and the
various contacts, material and psychic, which thus far had been
his, did not tend to convince him of the reality and force of all
that his mother and father seemed so certainly to believe and say.
Rather, they seemed more or less troubled in their lives, at least
materially. His father was always reading the Bible and speaking
in meeting at different places, especially in the "mission," which
he and his mother conducted not so far from this corner. At the
same time, as he understood it, they collected money from various
interested or charitably inclined business men here and there who
appeared to believe in such philanthropic work. Yet the family was
always "hard up," never very well clothed, and deprived of many
comforts and pleasures which seemed common enough to others. And
his father and mother were constantly proclaiming the love and
mercy and care of God for him and for all. Plainly there was
something wrong somewhere. He could not get it all straight, but
still he could not help respecting his mother, a woman whose force
and earnestness, as well as her sweetness, appealed to him.
Despite much mission work and family cares, she managed to be
fairly cheerful, or at least sustaining, often declaring most
emphatically "God will provide" or "God will show the way,"
especially in times of too great stress about food or clothes. Yet
apparently, in spite of this, as he and all the other children
could see, God did not show any very clear way, even though there
was always an extreme necessity for His favorable intervention in
their affairs.
To-night, walking up the great street with his sisters and brother,
he wished that they need not do this any more, or at least that he
need not be a part of it. Other boys did not do such things, and
besides, somehow it seemed shabby and even degrading. On more than
one occasion, before he had been taken on the street in this
fashion, other boys had called to him and made fun of his father,
because he was always publicly emphasizing his religious beliefs or
convictions. Thus in one neighborhood in which they had lived,
when he was but a child of seven, his father, having always
preluded every conversation with "Praise the Lord," he heard boys
call "Here comes old Praise-the-Lord Griffiths." Or they would
call out after him "Hey, you're the fellow whose sister plays the
organ. Is there anything else she can play?"
"What does he always want to go around saying, 'Praise the Lord'
for? Other people don't do it."
It was that old mass yearning for a likeness in all things that
troubled them, and him. Neither his father nor his mother was like
other people, because they were always making so much of religion,
and now at last they were making a business of it.
On this night in this great street with its cars and crowds and
tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out of normal life, to be
made a show and jest of. The handsome automobiles that sped by,
the loitering pedestrians moving off to what interests and comforts
he could only surmise; the gay pairs of young people, laughing and
jesting and the "kids" staring, all troubled him with a sense of
something different, better, more beautiful than his, or rather
their life.
And now units of this vagrom and unstable street throng, which was
forever shifting and changing about them, seemed to sense the
psychologic error of all this in so far as these children were
concerned, for they would nudge one another, the more sophisticated
and indifferent lifting an eyebrow and smiling contemptuously, the
more sympathetic or experienced commenting on the useless presence
of these children.
"I see these people around here nearly every night now--two or
three times a week, anyhow," this from a young clerk who had just
met his girl and was escorting her toward a restaurant. "They're
just working some religious dodge or other, I guess."
"That oldest boy don't wanta be here. He feels outa place, I can
see that. It ain't right to make a kid like that come out unless
he wants to. He can't understand all this stuff, anyhow." This
from an idler and loafer of about forty, one of those odd hangers-
on about the commercial heart of a city, addressing a pausing and
seemingly amiable stranger.
"Yeh, I guess that's so," the other assented, taking in the
peculiar cast of the boy's head and face. In view of the uneasy
and self-conscious expression upon the face whenever it was lifted,
one might have intelligently suggested that it was a little unkind
as well as idle to thus publicly force upon a temperament as yet
unfitted to absorb their import, religious and psychic services
best suited to reflective temperaments of maturer years.
Yet so it was.
As for the remainder of the family, both the youngest girl and boy
were too small to really understand much of what it was all about
or to care. The eldest girl at the organ appeared not so much to
mind, as to enjoy the attention and comment her presence and
singing evoked, for more than once, not only strangers, but her
mother and father, had assured her that she had an appealing and
compelling voice, which was only partially true. It was not a good
voice. They did not really understand music. Physically, she was
of a pale, emasculate and unimportant structure, with no real
mental force or depth, and was easily made to feel that this was an
excellent field in which to distinguish herself and attract a
little attention. As for the parents, they were determined upon
spiritualizing the world as much as possible, and, once the hymn
was concluded, the father launched into one of those hackneyed
descriptions of the delights of a release, via self-realization of
the mercy of God and the love of Christ and the will of God toward
sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.
"All men are sinners in the light of the Lord," he declared.
"Unless they repent, unless they accept Christ, His love and
forgiveness of them, they can never know the happiness of being
spiritually whole and clean. Oh, my friends! If you could but
know the peace and content that comes with the knowledge, the
inward understanding, that Christ lived and died for you and that
He walks with you every day and hour, by light and by dark, at dawn
and at dusk, to keep and strengthen you for the tasks and cares of
the world that are ever before you. Oh, the snares and pitfalls
that beset us all! And then the soothing realization that Christ
is ever with us, to counsel, to aid, to hearten, to bind up our
wounds and make us whole! Oh, the peace, the satisfaction, the
comfort, the glory of that!"
"Amen!" asseverated his wife, and the daughter, Hester, or Esta, as
she was called by the family, moved by the need of as much public
support as possible for all of them--echoed it after her.
Clyde, the eldest boy, and the two younger children merely gazed at
the ground, or occasionally at their father, with a feeling that
possibly it was all true and important, yet somehow not as
significant or inviting as some of the other things which life
held. They heard so much of this, and to their young and eager
minds life was made for something more than street and mission hall
protestations of this sort.
Finally, after a second hymn and an address by Mrs. Griffiths,
during which she took occasion to refer to the mission work jointly
conducted by them in a near-by street, and their services to the
