An American Tragedy

The narrator introduces the family of Samuel Griffiths of Lycurgus, New York. Samuel made a fortune as a shirt-collar manufacturer after getting both his portion and Asa’s from the family estate; their father disowned Asa. Elizabeth, his wife, is a placid woman. Samuel has a studious older daughter, Myra, and a younger, more socially active daughter, Bella. Elizabeth isn’t pleased that Bella spends so much time with the children of new money in town, including the Cranstons and Finchleys. Elizabeth deplores their flashy clothes, cars, and homes. Gilbert Griffiths is the only son and works in the family business. He is much older than his sisters and is an arrogant man.

It is two years after the car accident. Samuel tells his family over dinner that he met his nephew, Clyde Griffiths, who is working as a bellhop in a Chicago club. Clyde looks so much like Gilbert. Clyde told Samuel that Asa and his family have moved to Denver to run a hotel (this is a lie). With the family’s approval, Samuel wants to give Clyde a menial position in his factory and see how he does. Samuel decides to move ahead with his plan to welcome Clyde. Clyde is a poor relation, so he is sure that Clyde won’t expect to mingle socially with the family.

The narrative goes back in time to after the car accident. Clyde flees to Chicago and works menial jobs under a pseudonym. A news story on the killing includes interviews from the bellhops’ parents, including Elvira. Clyde finally writes Elvira. She writes back to exhort him to live a godly life. Clyde runs into Ratterer who gives him a reference for a job as a bellhop at the Union League Club, a private club frequented by the rich and powerful. No women are allowed. Clyde wants to be like these men, so he becomes understated and more circumspect and swears off women. With his good looks and genteel manners, Clyde appears to be a young man with a good future ahead of him. His upbringing has destroyed all chance of him having the strength of character that he needs to be successful, however. Ratterer intuits this truth. He tells Clyde to loosen up and be more confident in himself.

Ratterer pushes Clyde to meets Samuel after discovering that Samuel is a guest at the club. Clyde impresses his uncle with his smart uniform and association with the club. Back in the present moment of the novel, Samuel and Gilbert decide what to do with Clyde. Both father and son believe that people at the bottom of society deserve to be there; poor salaries and exploitative jobs are character-building and allow the truly strong ones to rise to the top. They therefore assign Clyde the most menial position in the factory—the hot and dirty job of pre-shrinking the cloth for the shirt collars—and set him a very low salary. Gilbert simply wants to make life as difficult as possible for Clyde. Clyde shows up weeks later. He freshens up at the Lycurgus House hotel before walking around town.

Clyde presents himself at the Griffithses’ factory. Gilbert meets him and is cold and condescending. He is pleased to tell Clyde that he will be doing hard physical labor. Clyde feels miserable when he sees where he will be working and wonders if he should have stayed home after all. He wants his past—Esta’s pregnancy, his parents’ work in the mission, and the killing of the little girl—to remain a secret from his new family and certainly from his soon-to-be coworkers. They will think even less of him if they learn who he really is.

Clyde’s coworkers are both suspicious and deferential because they know that he is a Griffiths, yet one who has a menial job. Clyde has no true peers. He feels stuck in a “basement world” (81). After his interview, Clyde walks the streets of Lycurgus. He looks with envy at the fine district where the Griffithses live and looks down on the ordinary workers for their meaty bodies and humdrum movements. The people in the commercial district are young, well-dressed, and happy. Clyde realizes that he may find happiness here after all. Leaving behind Hortense and his family—people who relied on him for money—may be for the best.

Clyde meets Walter Dillard, an ambitious young man who is his neighbor in the boarding house where Clyde lives. Walter invites Clyde to private parties where there will be accommodating women and alcohol. Clyde declines these offers at first because he doesn’t want his uncle to hear about it. Clyde changes his mind as he grows lonelier.

Dillard takes Clyde to a church social and makes sure that everyone knows that a Griffiths is his friend. Clyde feels flattered by the attention. He later accompanies Dillard and two young women to their apartment and ends up kissing one of them by the end of the night. He believes, just as his mother told him, that getting into relationships like this is what led to his downfall in Kansas City, but he can’t help himself.

Samuel invites Clyde to family dinner. Once at the house, Clyde is nervous. Mrs. Griffiths is shocked by how much he looks like Gilbert. Both she and her husband see a certain lack of force that they attribute to his poor upbringing and strange parents. Gilbert only pokes his head in to make condescending comments to everyone in the room. Rather than see this as poor behavior, Clyde sees Gilbert’s actions and speech as fitting for a man who has everything that he wants.

Bella and her pretty friends, Sondra Finchley and Bertine Cranston, come in. Mrs. Griffiths tells them that Clyde is a poor relation. Clyde becomes invisible to Bertine, but Sondra looks at Clyde with interest and regret. Clyde is instantly drawn to her. His mood is noticeably lower after this encounter. Samuel feels bad for him and promises to take him sightseeing come spring.

Samuel tours the factory and sees Clyde sweating down in the shrinking room in the sleeveless shirt and old clothes that workers use to stay cooler. Samuel decides that this won’t do. It makes the family look stingy, and Clyde looks so much like Gilbert that it is impossible to forget that Clyde is a Griffiths. Samuel forces Gilbert (whom he knows to be jealous of Clyde) to increase Clyde’s pay so that he can afford decent clothes. Clyde will move to the lowest management position they can find: department head for the stamping room, where the sizes are put on the shirt collars. Gilbert emphasizes that the stamping room is staffed mostly with women, and it is forbidden to have relationships with them because it will reflect poorly on the factory. Clyde is elated that he may finally be moving up.

Clyde moves out of his boarding house to avoid Walter and the woman he kissed. Despite his intention not become entangled with women, he soon begins to think about having an affair with the many women who flirt with him in the stamping room. He doesn’t find most of these women attractive because he sees them as crass, working-class women who don’t measure up with him. When Samuel gets the chance to hire stamping room workers, he hires Roberta Alden because she is pretty and refined.

Roberta Alden is a farmer’s daughter from nearby Blitz, New York. She lives in a boarding house in Lycurgus. Her parents are conventionally moral and poor. Roberta dreams of having a better life, but she depletes her savings each time her family needs financial help. She sees the men and boys who show interest in her as beneath her. She does long for love and romance, however. The narrator notes that there is some underlying sensuality that counters the morality her parents taught her. When she meets Clyde, she thinks that she has found the perfect man.

Roberta learns that Clyde has status because he is a Griffiths. She is flattered when he pays more attention to her than the other women in the stamping room. His name and diffident way of talking charm her. She begins to distrust his interest in her because she can’t imagine a man of his status falling in love with a woman like her. Clyde makes his move when he sees Roberta banter with a coworker who debates dating a man because he gave her a fancy purse. Claude suspects that beneath Roberta’s prim exterior is a woman who might respond to his advances.

Clyde runs into Roberta during a solo canoeing trip one weekend. She is with Grace Marr, a friend from her boarding house. Roberta leaves Grace on shore to take a boat ride with Clyde. They admit that they are attracted to each other. Roberta is wary of spending time in public with Clyde because it will cause a scandal, but she is excited by the prospect of being with him.

Grace joins them in the canoe. Grace and Roberta make their way home separately from Clyde. Later that week, Clyde and Roberta meet again at the lake. In the days after, they are so consumed by thoughts of each other that they make mistakes at work. Clyde becomes more circumspect because he doesn’t want anyone to notice his attraction to Roberta. The two agree to meet in secret one day.

Roberta tells Grace and the Newtons, her landlords at the rooming house, that she has to skip a church service for work training. This is cover for the date with Clyde. Clyde enjoys himself. There is none of the ambivalence and worry that he experienced with Hortense. He tells Roberta that he loves her. Although Roberta protests at first, she finally admits that she loves him back.

Grace is almost always by Roberta’s side and asks if Roberta and Clyde are dating. Roberta mentions the work policy on supervisor-subordinate relationships and denies dating Clyde. Clyde asks Roberta to meet him on Sundays; she can tell the Newtons that she is attending a different church. Roberta finds lying about going to church so that she can see a man repugnant. Clyde apologizes. When Roberta plans a weekend visit to her sister, she and Clyde arrange to meet in a town that is on the way to her sister’s house. The couple spends time at the Starlight, a pleasure park that has a dance floor. Roberta refuses to dance with Clyde at first because her family taught her that it is sinful. Clyde convinces her that dancing is just fine since they both come from a religious background. Roberta continues on to see her sister and arranges to meet Clyde again on her return trip to Lycurgus.

Grace grows suspicious when a friend tells her that Roberta and Clyde were at the Starlight together. When Grace confronts her, Roberta claims that she was there with a friend of her sister. The lie is so obvious that Roberta moves out of the Newtons’ house to avoid more conflict. Her parents would be unhappy if they knew. They allow her to work and live in town because they have the same religious beliefs as the Newtons. Roberta’s new room is more private, and her landlord has no problem with male visitors. Roberta writes to her mother to tell her that she moved because Grace was always under foot and to have room for family to visit. Roberta is shocked at her own willingness to lie.

Clyde and Roberta keep sneaking off to other towns for outdoor excursions. With the weather growing colder, these dates will become impossible. Clyde pressures Roberta to meet secretly in her room at night. Roberta refuses because being caught will damage her reputation. Clyde has an angry outburst in response. Roberta knows that her parents wouldn’t approve of such visits and wonders if Clyde thinks that he can take advantage of her because she is of lower status. She wants Clyde, though.

Roberta wakes up with a panicked feeling. When she looks in the mirror, she can see her tired eyes and wonders if the woman whom she sees there is capable of doing as Clyde asks. At work the next morning, Clyde ignores Roberta and flirts with other girls, actions that confirm Roberta’s fears about their class difference. Clyde knows that being a Griffiths and Roberta’s manager give him some power over her. Roberta slips a note to Clyde. She asks him to forgive her and meet with her later that evening. His coldness disappears, and Roberta is relieved.

Clyde and Roberta move from dates in her room to sex in her room. Roberta sees sex outside of marriage as immoral, but it feels so good that she ignores her conscience. She still worries that Clyde is using her and even hopes that he will eventually marry her. He seems experienced, so he may also just be a serial seducer. Clyde enjoys the sex and companionship. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he sees a handsome, confident man whom any number of women might love. He needs the ego boost since the other Griffiths continue to ignore him, especially after they retreat to a summer home.