aits (lust, envy, melancholy) is a feature of his uncontrollably weak, vicious morality. He never breaks out of the vicious cycle of pain and pleasure (with more pain than pleasure). When he works at the Greene-Davidson Hotel, he is unfortunate enough to catch a glimpse of "high society." Transfixed, he creates a religion, and women, money, and clothes, are his gods. While wandering, he happens to meet his rich uncle. This uncle gives him a job with daunting social, financial, and sexual possibilities. Clyde seduces Roberta (a kind, pretty, poor girl), obsesses about Sondra (a beautiful rich girl who expresses her deepest thoughts in baby talk), then kills Roberta (who threatens to take away his position in society). Clyde shows no remorse -- for months, he does not think he murdered Roberta. Clyde has no thoughts: everything he does is instinctual. Society taught him that material success and material possessions were everything and he, because of his weak morals, instantly agreed. Whenever Clyde was entranced by a girl, he courted her without thinking whether relations would damage his reputation. He never considered how much his whims would hurt his girl. In Kansas City, when he and his friends crushed a little girl while joy riding in a stolen car, they did not care about the childs condition; their only instinct is to run from the police. More disturbingly, Clyde did not even think he had committed a crime when he killed Roberta -- he killed her because that the easiest way out of his dilemma, the easiest way to in society's good grace. When she drowned, he fled from his obligations instinctively, then "[transformed] his mental and moral cowardice into ... "accidental" murder." That, to him, was instinct. Clyde was more an embodiment of the naturalist movement than a real person. An American Tragedy is the definitive guidebook to the futility of pursuing The American Dream. In its 874 pages of small print, not one character lives t...
