re sex, and more happiness (the one thing he will never have). His pursuit of the American Dream quickly becomes machinelike. In a typical novel, there would have to be a dramatic change for a little choir boy to become a murderer. Not this novel. For Clyde, each section of life further weakens his morals. During his early romances, he only courts girls for kisses and uses his money to drink and dress stylishly. Later, he uses influence, looks, and charm, to seduce Roberta. He uses these same qualities to make Sondra love him. Seeing an easy way out of his dilemma, he kills Roberta. That does not even seem to be a problem for him -- his morals are so lacking that murder is only step above below him. At the end of the novel, Clyde is born again. When Pastor McMillan visits, Clyde -- for the first time ever, and despite the possibility that the pastor might ruin his chance to be freed from jail -- confesses his crime. He begins to read scriptures and thinks that he is similar to fellow seekers of the Elusive American Dream. He regrets that he could have saved himself many times, but is now beyond help. He wishes he had followed his mother and father, who are happy and loving. Once Clyde trusts God, he dies. Long before Clyde was a character, he was Dreiser's vehicle to enter the mind of the killer, whom he was unable to but wanted to understand (Lundquist 87). Every section of the novel details Clyde's meaningless life and shows his progressive moral downfall. In the beginning, Clyde did not have money, sex, or a social life. Throughout his life, he struggled to obtain these things, this purchasable happiness and false sincerity that money could buy or rent. On the road to murder, he begged for a job at the Greene-Davidson Hotel; he used his salary to solicit prostitutes, clothe himself fashionably, and date Hortense. Two years before his death, Clyde still did not realize that his life was useless and horrible, a sham. Each of Clyde's tr...
