Chapter 4 American Naturalism

I.Background

1.Darwin's theory: "natural selection"
2.Spenser's idea: "social Darwinism"
3.French Naturalism: Zora

II.Features

nment and heredity
ific accuracy and a lot of details
l tone: hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of the society

icance

It prepares the way for the writing of 1920s’ “l(fā)ost generation” and T. S. Eliot.

IV.Theodore Dreiser

(1)Sister Carrie
(2)The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic
(3)Jennie Gerhardt
(4)American Tragedy
(5)The Genius

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