Sister Carrie Character Analysis Essay

The Living Situation Affects Carrie’s Moral Judgments In Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Carrie Meeber, a young provincial girl without money, social status, and special ability, comes to glamorous Chicago alone. In such a poor condition, if she wants to chase her dream to live a high-level life in the urban, she must suit “the discipline of society” and it is like “the law of the jungle”. The city processes the cruel survival competition. Thus, she has to face two choices: “Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, to rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse” (Dreiser 86). As an innocent type, Carrie could face difficulties maintaining her moral principle in a dog-eat-dog world. At the same time, Carrie’s desolate, weary, and arduous real life

Looking for a job is not an easy mission, especially for a young girl who does not have working experience. She has never worked in a factory and does not know how to type in office. She is not competitive. Although she is hired by a shoes factory as a worker finally, her job is unsatisfactory, a too low salary, a too terrible working environment, and too tired. The lower condition of the factory leads her to get ill and then she loses her only job and source of income. The living situation forces her to face such a dilemma: one is to find another monotonous job; another is to go back to hometown. Meanwhile, her sister’s life is like a mirror and seems to tell her future life — nonstop working hard but still living in a so small and ragged space with her husband and child. This life is not she wanted and she feels disillusioned with honest and diligent overworked poverty. She refuses to return to the factory. Additionally, Carrie is a dreamer or a seeker to desire an unclear aspiration for the charming that might lift her out of the ordinary life. She never wants to go back to the