The name is absent

THE SUPERNATURAL NATURALISM OF
DREISER’S NOVELS

THE first chapter of The Financier includes a passage
commonly identified as the epitome of Theodore
Dreiser’s naturalism. Frank Cowperwood, an intelligent
schoolboy filled with curiosity about the world, having re-
jected the story of Adam and Eve, prefers to Ieam about life
from a tank of sea specimens in front of a fish-market. There,
day by day, he watches the losing life-and-death struggle of
a squid against a devouring lobster.

“That’s the way it has to he, I guess,” he commented to
himself. “That squid wasn’t quick enough.” He figured it out.

(p∙ 4)

This dramatic event in Cowperwood’s childhood obviously
is an important clue to his adult attitudes and behavior: the
observed ruthlessness of nature sets a compass to his personal
unscrupulousness—

Lobsters lived on squids and other things. What Hved on lob-
sters? Men, of course! Sure, that was it! And What lived on
men? he asked himself. Was it other men? . . . He wasn’t so
sure about men living on men; but men did kill each
other. . . . Sure, men Hved on men. Look at the slaves. They
were men.                                      (ibid., p. 5)

The lifetime motto of Frank Cowperwood, “I satisfy my-
self,” is not, however, a master key to unlock the total mean-
ing of even his story, far less of the Dreiser novels in general.
The epilogue of The Financier opens with a kind of medita-
tive essay likewise drawn from sea life:

There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is
Mycteroperca Bonaci, its common name Black Grouper,
which is of considerable value as an afterthought . . . That
very subtle thing which we call the creative power, and
which we endow with the spirit of the beatitudes, is supposed

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