ENGLISH 2H06 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy, Chester Gillette
3 Feb 2017
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Focus on the individual, who is special enough to overcome/ usurp oppressive forces. Forces such as industrialization, reconstruction, northern urbanization, rapid advances in communications, science, and transportation. A focus on a great accumulation of detail, to the detriment of plot and character. Pessimistic outlook of life (ex. people are animals, women are weak, men are workers) The outside world doesn"t care about us and will continue on. Internal dna, ethnicity, race, social, political-> cannot be escaped. Determinism: we are subject to external forces beyond ourselves (cannot rely solely on the great strength of our spirit/ individuality). We are constrained by circumstances we cannot control: biological and genetic (mendel), evolution (darwin), population studies (malthus), psychological (freud), marx (inevitable call struggle), etc. The outlook of human beings is external and based on where you come from. Walcott: (cid:498) the brute within(cid:499) (themes of violence, struggle, survival, brutality, sexual. Was found dead in a lake in the adirondacks depravity, greed, dominance, etc)
