368).Ĭarrie has both wealth and fame, but she does not reach success through her own efforts.

One of these impediments is convention, which states “you shall not better yourself save by honest labor” (Dreiser, 1991, p. It could be argued that Dreiser makes the point that success can only come from ones efforts through his statement that Carrie found herself “turned to a wall” in all of her desires (Dreiser, 1991, p. In Sister Carrie, it is obvious that the meaning of the term “success” is relative, in that none of the main characters are truly successful. Hurstwood, although well off at the beginning of the novel, meets with ruin and with suicide by its end. Drouet learns nothing and gains nothing by the end of the novel, but neither does he lose anything. Carrie meets Drouet by chance and then meets Hurstwood through him, also through no effort of her own.ĭespite her being immoral in her behavior, she is rewarded by the opportunity to own fine things and, ultimately, through material wealth of her own through her skill as an actress. Rather, their successes and failures seem random, based on chance instead of effort.

Sister Carrie is a novel that contains moral themes however, unlike many stories written at the time, it does not reward characters for being moral or for taking moral actions. It is through money that all of these characters determine their success however, it is not the best means by which to determine their actual success. Their lives entwine early on in the novel, driven by their relative need for money. Theodore Dreiser’s novel, Sister Carrie, closely examines the successes and failures of three of its characters: the protagonist Carrie Meeber, Charles Drouet, and George Hurstwood.

Dreiser novel sister