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Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser · novel, 1900·12 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
The 30‑second version12 hrs → 50 sec
  • A traveling salesman marks her before Chicago even comes into view. Charles Drouet corners Carrie on the train with a fat purse "filled with slips of paper, some mileage books, a roll of greenbacks" and has her address written down before the train reaches the station. She is carrying four dollars and a scrap of paper with her sister's address.
  • Her first job pays four dollars fifty a week. At the shoe factory she is handed a stool "with the air of a domestic" and told her wage is "four-fifty per week," a sum that will not even cover her car fare once rent comes due.
  • Hurstwood packs the stolen cash into his satchel, then puts it back. He counts the bills, loses his nerve, and is closing the safe when it locks itself: "the lock clicked. It had sprung! Did he do it?" That accident, not intent, turns him into a fugitive.
  • Carrie's silent part becomes a hit because she frowns. Cast as a mute "little Quakeress," she is told to scowl through every scene until the audience starts laughing at her instead of the comedian. The Evening World's critic writes, "If you wish to be merry, see Carrie frown," and she becomes Miss Madenda overnight.
  • Hurstwood is counted like cattle in a bread line. Begging with a crowd of men on Fifth Avenue, he hears the captain call out "One hundred and thirty-seven" before marching the group to a flophouse for the night.
  • He turns on the gas without lighting a match. In a room that rents for fifteen cents, he says "What's the use?" and dies. His unclaimed body goes by "slow, black boat" to Potter's Field, a fact Carrie never even learns.
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: Dreiser refuses to punish Carrie or reward Hurstwood; the ending hands her everything she wanted and still leaves her rocking alone by the window, a verdict on ambition itself.

A country girl trades poverty for a rich man's money, a rich man's money for stardom, and stardom for an empty rocking chair by the window.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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