Sister Carrie

3 Pages 794 Words

Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie is a simple tale of a young, pretty eighteen year old girl Caroline Meeber also know as Carrie. When Carrie got on the train from Columbia City to Chicago she had only few cheap items in her trunk and her sister’s address on a piece of paper. Being only eighteen she was still "full of the illusions of ignorance and youth"(Dreiser, 7). She was both afraid of the things to come and exited by the countless possibilities offered by one of the largest cities of the late 19th century – Chicago. As soon as Carrie arrives in Chicago various obstacles face her. She has no experience at working outside home, which makes finding any work very difficult. She does not like the simple, and in her view, boring way of life her sister and brother in law live. Being this young and curious woman she yearns for more than what is around her. She has no education, no wealth to fall on and as we read the novel we also discover she has no morals. Even though at some point Dreiser claims that Carrie is "the victim of the city’s hypnotic influence"(Dreiser, 79) it becomes clear that in fact she is not a helpless victim by any means – she just simply goes along with anything and anyone who comes along. Tired and disappointed with her early days at a low paying hard work Carrie chooses to leave her sister – the only real family she has in the city – and goes off with a Drouet, a man she just recently met on the train. Carrie knew nothing about Drouet except that he seemed to like her and appeared to have more money than she could ever got her hands on. When she goes off with him there is no conflict within her, no regrets, no second thoughts. As soon as an opportunity to leave her boring life arrived Carrie took it and never looked back. All she cared about was the fact that now she no longer needed to work long hours for little pay. By becoming Drouet’s kept woman she no longer had to worry about getting comfortabl...