Una macchina da cucire per il nuovo mondo: An American Tragedy di Theodore Dreiser. Atto I e atto II

This essay examines Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy through the lens of the naturalist tradition and its evolution in the early twentieth century. Drawing from Conrad’s mechanistic metaphor of the universe as a “knitting Machine,” the author situates Dreiser within a lineage of writers who portray human beings as shaped by impersonal social and economic forces. The essay traces Dreiser’s influences—from Balzac and Zola to Spencer and Darwin—and highlights the stylistic ambivalence critics perceived in his work. Focusing on the first two acts of An American Tragedy, it explores Dreiser’s epic depiction of American life, where desire, class mobility, and industrial capitalism intersect. The narrative’s dense realism, cinematic techniques, and symbolic use of landscape reveal a world governed by chance and structural determinism. Clyde Griffiths emerges as an Everyman trapped in a vast socio-economic machine, embodying the limits of naturalist knowledge and the novel’s tragic vision.