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   timbrady Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   Dreiser is often consiered to be a determinist.  He believed that we were not free agents, but that we were driven by "chemisms."  Although he never specifies exactly what these are, we know that they are forces that drive us, almost in spite of ourselves, in certain directions. He compares us to a moth drawn irresistably to the flame or to a waife in the breeze.

   In "Sister Carrie" one of these is our attractions is to economic success, wealth and all the associated trappings.  Carrie comes to Chicago, lives in poverty with her sister, works for a brief time in a shoe factory and realizes that this is going to get her nowhere.  It is then that she somewhat fortuituously meets Drouet (who she had first met on the train) and he beings her march toward weath.  He gives her money to buy one of the major symbols in the book --- clothes.  These symbolize Carrie's fixation on the outward trappings of wealth without any need to improve the self they are on.  Another major symbol in the book is the rocking chair.  A rocking chair requires effort to create movement, but this movement never gets the rocker anywhere.  The chair appears some 13 times in the novel, and always carries the same meaning, whether it is Carrie early in the novel, or Hurstwood later in the story.  Carrie finds no fulfillment in her "success."

   There are other themes and symbolizes, but these seem like major ones to me.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/sister-carrie/character-analysis

   http://www.enotes.com/sister-carrie/themes

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   Posted by timbrady on Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 9:04 PM