Materialism, Opportunism, and Moral Decay in Theodore Dreiser

This book attempts to reveal how an individual’s pursuit of success and satisfaction were influenced by the sentimental impacts of competitive and monopoly capitalism in the Trilogy of Desire. In the trilogy, Theodore Dreiser depicts the relationship between spiritual and material drives in human behavior. Cowperwood character is based on the true story of capitalist and robber baron Charles T. Yerkes, who bribed politicians and other authorities during the industrial capitalism era in America. In this sense, Cowperwood is a historical expression of how instincts and capitalist circumstances interact with human desires and spirituality. Dreiser scientifically shows us through Cowperwood’s lenses how life is organized and reflected in human attitudes. Dreiser explains the relationship between the psychic and physical worlds through the phenomenon of human temperament. Escape, failure, success, satisfaction, and happiness are the controlling forces that determine these relationships. Dreiser stages in the trilogy how these emotions and impulses dominate human preferences in the historical context of capitalist American society in the 19th century. He suggests that excessive materialism reduces spiritual meaning and financial success to bourgeois absurdity and illusions, and he claims the reader should become conscious of the absence of sentimental meaning in a bourgeois society. The book discusses capitalist values from a historical perspective to show how the values activate human emotions and instincts in the Trilogy of Desire.