Is Carrie happy?


“Sister Kerry” … like those who love shine,

And the excitement of Broadway, and the atmosphere of the capital as a whole. “

“Everyone… strives for one thing – to be as happy as possible”.

T. Dreiser

The novel “Sister Kerry” by Theodore Dreiser came out in print in 1900. The pursuit of wealth, which has become a characteristic feature of life in America, is of interest to the writer, who devoted a lot of time to studying the dramatic circumstances associated with the world of exploitation and big business. This is reflected in his first novel “Sister Kerry”.

In the novel, according to Dreiser himself, the philosophy of chance gets its artistic embodiment.

Dreiser began his creative career at the beginning of the 20th century. As if the writer himself was destined to express the spirit of the coming era, and the cross-cutting theme of his work was the life struggle.

The

topic of the struggle of Dreiser, like that of many American writers after him, is the concretization, deciphering of the original document of American history – the Declaration of Independence – at the point where it refers to “inalienable human rights” and where among these rights is called “the pursuit of happiness” . Dreiser showed how desire becomes an end in itself, as a struggle absorbs a person, turning it into a tool for achieving “happiness” and depriving them of the ability to experience happiness itself.

Characteristically, the first heroine of Dreiser, Caroline Mieber, not only has no children, but this question does not even arise, because she is in general almost incapable of loving, driven only by self-pity and a desire for success. This lovely, pretty and very mediocre woman is “modern” in the worst sense of the word, in the sense in which the suffering and enamored heroines of the 19th century are not “modern”. “Contemporary” is not only a lack of feelings, but also a conscience of success, including the success

of the creative, the triumph of the actress, despite the fact that she has no special data. She is an ordinary provincial girl, possessing ambition, common sense and, as it turns out, quite tough character, helping her to climb up.

Kerry understands that to achieve a more satiated existence, and even more so – you can take a place at the top, just leaving something aside. They may be close, her men, who were less fortunate than she. She understands that the happiness of one is achieved through the misfortune of another in the order of a cruel choice: to become in pursuit of happiness, either a winner or a victim.

But is this winner so happy? Dreiser shows that, having reached wealth and fame, Kerry remained lonely and unhappy and lives and her glittering world without love, to which she, most likely, is not capable, but who, like every woman, waits.


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Is Carrie happy?