Theodore Dreiser stands among the most significant of the American naturalists, a writer who left an indelible mark on literature. His books — Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, and the trilogy The Financier, The Titan, The Stoic — open a window onto the lives of people at the start of the twentieth century and the problems they faced. Sister Carrie follows a young woman who leaves her small town for the big city in search of happiness and fortune; hers is a story of the search for self, of the longing for a better life, and of collision with the world's harsher realities.
Dreiser raises large questions about man, society, and morality. He shows how people, under the pressure of circumstance and milieu, come to revise their values and principles. Through his characters he explores love, greed, power, and social inequality; his heroes are so often at odds with their world that the novels become a running critique of the social norms and conventions of the age. He never shied from raw or unpopular subjects, and that is what makes his books not merely absorbing but thought-provoking.
The governing images of Dreiser's fiction are the city, money, and power. The city appears as a place where one can grow rich quickly — and just as quickly lose one's identity and moral bearings. Money and power become the chief driving forces for many of his characters, often with tragic results; through these images Dreiser shows how a capitalist system can corrupt people and hollow out their souls. The trilogy The Financier, The Titan, The Stoic is the clearest example — the story of the rise and fall of a great financier, and a study of what power and wealth do to a man.
His contemporaries received the work with mixed feelings. Some found his portrait of reality too frank and too uncomfortable; others praised his boldness and his talent. Today the books are classics of American literature, still studied and still argued over. Readers find in them not only compelling stories but occasions for reflection — on their own values and principles, on what actually matters in a life, and on how not to lose oneself in the pursuit of success and wealth.
To read Dreiser is to encounter not just absorbing narratives but the early twentieth century itself, with its troubles and its manners — an age in which people fought for their rights, for a better life, and for their self-respect.