In 'An American Tragedy' Theodore Dreiser told the story of a bellboy who is indecisive like Hamlet and who set out to gain worldly success and fame. The quest for dollar as the Horatio Alger myth in the novel was equated with transcendental desires.

THE DESIRE for escape from the monotony of reality is romantic in its essence. In his famous novel ‘An American Tragedy’ Dreiser’s perception accommodated in it the same pattern of counter-romance, which simultaneously engendered illusions and frustrated them. Dreiser’s transcendental desires that were indicative of individual will deny to human being in a Naturalistic fiction. He used the running account of the Gillet case in the New York World as the foundation for the novel. Clyde, the son of poverty-stricken Kansas City evangelist was the central character of the novel. For Clyde, the lure of the great world soon came in conflict with his parents’ religion. Their solemn preachments were not accommodated in his mind, which was much too responsive to phases of beauty and pleasure.

 
Clyde saw the people all around him and longed for better days and resolved to escape from his family to a job in Kansas City, as a bellboy at the Green Davidson Hotel for fulfilling his quest for a life luxury and ease. There was a series of occasions reflecting Clyde’s illusions and disillusionment in the novel. Clyde and some friends accidentally ran over a child while driving an automobile, Clyde was forced to flee Kansas City to avoid punishment. He passed several years in Chicago where he met his wealthy uncle Samuel Griffiths who offered him a job in his factory. Dreiser stressed the romantic bent of Clyde’s mind. Clyde cherished a dream of affluence and supremacy for himself. He made up a mind to join the post and moved to Lycargus. However, he was not given any access into the high society In spite of the blood-kinship with the wealthy Griffiths, he, being a common laborer, had to work in the shrinking room in the collar factory of his uncle. Here he was deeply involved with Roberta Alden who like Clyde himself was ambitious.
 

However, Clyde longed for new girls not merely for sexual gratification but also for a more prominent social tentacle. Clyde’s acquaintance with Sondra Finchley provided him the desired passport for the entry into the elite society.
 
The irony of the story lies in the fact that Clyde is a victim of illusions. His tragedy began when Roberta became pregnant. The abortion could not be arranged. Love was Clyde’s whole existence. But now he reached a critical moment when he was about to destroy love.
 
The idea of killing Roberta impressed itself upon him when he was not able to fight off the dark thought. He managed to lure Roberta to the middle of the Big Bittern Lake in a canoe. Clyde was not able to kill her but only pushed her with the camera and both of them fell into water. The only inhuman thing he did was that he had selected not to save Roberta.
 
Clyde’s moral cowardice was his diabolic wish and it referred to his darker self that revealed Dresier’s debt not to Darwin but to Dostoevsky. Clyde hovered between faith belief and disbelief. Clyde’s quest for the dream girl was simply the quest for the impossible, “…the desire of the moth for the star / Of the night for the morrow/ A devotion to something afar / From the sphere of our sorrow.”
 
Clyde at the end of the story realised like Macbeth, “All is but toys’. In Dreiser’s eye this is the nature of tragedy in the American life. The dream engendered by unlimited material promises and gradual corruption of it is a tragic reality which Dreiser attempted to highlight in ‘An American Tragedy’.