Chapter 4 American Naturalism
I.Background
1.Darwin's theory: "natural selection"
2.Spenser's idea: "social Darwinism"
3.French Naturalism: Zora
II.Features
1.environment and heredity
2.scientific accuracy and a lot of details
3.general tone: hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of the society
III.significance
It prepares the way for the writing of 1920s’ “lost generation” and T. S. Eliot.
IV.Theodore Dreiser
1.life
2.works
(1)Sister Carrie
(2)The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic
(3)Jennie Gerhardt
(4)American Tragedy
(5)The Genius
3.point of view
(1)He embraced social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. He learned to regard man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a struggle for existence in which only the "fittest", the most ruthless, survive.
(2)Life is predatory, a "game" of the lecherous and heartless, a jungle struggle in which man, being "a waif and an interloper in Nature", a "wisp in the wind of social forces", is a mere pawn in the general scheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will.
(3)No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complex of internal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure.
4.Sister Carrie
(1)Plot
(2)Analysis
5.Style
(1)Without good structure
(2)Deficient characterization
(3)Lack in imagination
(4)Journalistic method
(5)Techniques in painting
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