Characters:
- Caroline (Carrie) Meeber
- Hurstwood
Plot summary:
- 18 year old Carrie leaves her rural Wisconsin home and heads for Chicago, Illinois, where she wants to live with her older sister's family
- She finds out that working in a sweatshop and living in a squalid, overcrowded apartment is not what she wants
- She leaves her family for a travelling salesman, Drouet
- She meets Hurstwood, the manager of a respectable bar, and they start an affair even though he has a family.
- One night, Hurstwood embezzles a large sum of money and he elopes with Carrie to Canada.
- After a while, his guilty conscience makes him pay back most of the money and the couple move to the East coast.
- Hurstwood and Carrie move into an apartment in NYC under an assumed name. Carrie starts looking for employment and finds a job at one of the many theatres.
- Carrie's rise to stardom is sharply contrasted with Hurstwood's downfall.
- She eventually leaves him and Hurstwood commits suicide in a cheap hotel.
An American Tragedy
Characters:
- Clyde Griffiths
- Roberta Alden
- Sondra Finchley
- Hortense Briggs
Summary:
- Clyde takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel and the boys he meet introduce him to alcohol and prostitution
- He enjoys his new lifestyle and does everything he can to win the affections of Hortense Briggs
- Clyde is forced to flee Kansas City after a stolen car he is travelling in with friends kills a young child. He reestablishes himself at his uncle's collar factory in Lycurgus, New York.
- Clyde succumbs to the charms of Roberta Alden, a poor girl working under him at the factory. However, his ambition forces him to realize that he could never marry her and he dreams of marrying the aristocratic Sondra Finchley instead.
- Roberta discovers she is pregnant and Clyde tries to secure an abortion of the child. He hatches a diabolical scheme to drown Roberta in order not to miss an opportunity to marry into Finchley's family.
- Clyde takes Roberta for a canoe ride in one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, but loses the nerve to murder her. However, Roberta accidentally falls out of the boat and drowns, and Clyde is too cowardly to save her.
- The circumstantial evidence points to murder and Clyde is eventually found guilty and sentenced to death.
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