The name is absent

Dreiser’s Supernatural Naturalism 61
circumstances” (ibid., p. 170); and the eventual dissolution of
the liaison is treated as an instance of “mutual compatibility
broken or disrupted by untoward conditions which in them-
selves have so Rttle to do with the real force and beauty of
the relationship itself” (ibid., p. 368).

“I want to tell you something, Jennie,” said Lester . . .
“I’ve thought of you right along since I left. . . . It isn’t my-
self that’s important in this transaction apparently; the indi-
vidual doesn’t count much in the situation. I don’t know
whether you see what Γm driving at, but all of us are more
or less pawns. Were moved about like chessmen by cir-
cumstances over which we have no control.”

(ibid., pp. 400-401)

At the end, Jennie sees her life as “a patchwork of conditions
made and affected by these things which she saw—wealth
and force—which had found her unfit . . . This panoply of
power had been paraded before her since childhood. . . .
Lester had been of it. Him it respected. Of her it knew
nothing.” (Ibid., p. 430.)

Eugene Witla, particularly in his conduct with Suzanne
Dale, “was no subtle schemer and planner, but rather an
easy natured soul, who drifted here and there with all the
tides and favorable or unfavorable winds of circumstance”
(The “Genius,” p. 602). Clyde Griffiths “was as interesting⁴
an illustration of the enormous handicaps imposed by ig-
norance, youth, poverty and fear as one could have found”;
likewise, his unfortunate sister Esta “as he now saw it, had
been brought no lower than he by circumstances over which
she probably had no more control”; and their father, Asa
Griffiths, “was one of those poorly integrated and correlated
organisms, the product of an environment and a religious
theory , . .” (An American Tragedy, pp. 418, 180, 22).

Must, then, the simple conclusion be reached that Theo-
dore Dreiser was Rteraiy spokesman for a Determinism of

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