An American Tragedy

The novel is was written and implicitly set during the 1920s, a period when many working-class American people lived below the poverty line, and wealth and income disparities were growing, due in part to factory industrialization (often associated with those of so-called “new money”) and generational wealth (associated with those of so-called “old money”). A burgeoning mass media helped to circulate the leisurely lifestyles of the rich and famous, while mass production and easy credit terms made it easier to obtain consumer goods and aspire to emulate these lifestyles. Clyde Griffiths’s quest for The American Dream comes during a time when leisure and conspicuous consumption are status markers.

Clyde learns his first lessons about wealth and looking wealthy at the Green-Davidson, the hotel in Kansas City where he works as a bellhop. He watches upwardly mobile members of the middle class consume copious amounts of alcohol and wear clothing that reflects their disposable income. Clyde purchases clothes on credit, and Hortense wants a fur coat on credit; both characters want to give the appearance of wealth. The bellhops’ final spree is driven in part by a desire to emulate the conspicuous consumption of the hotel guests. They rely on the ultimate status marker of the period—a luxury car—for their spree.