Abstract

    Written by Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie narrates the story of a girl called Carrie, with her pursuit of American Dream as the plotline. According to Dreiser’s description, Carrie's pursuit of American Dream is motivated by many reasons, including the social and family factors as well as her own personality. This paper is a detailed study of Sister Carrie's motivations of the pursuit of American Dream, with the emphasis on how the objective and subjective factors exert influences on Carrie's life as well as her choice, which in turn, reflects the culture of Carrie’s time.

Key words:  Sister Carrie, Carrie, pursuit of American Dream, motivations
 
摘 要

    西奥多.德莱赛的小说《嘉莉妹妹》讲述了以一个名叫嘉莉的女孩追寻美国梦为主线的故事。根据德莱赛的描写，嘉莉追寻美国梦的动机有很多种原因，包括社会家庭等因素，还包括她自身的性格原因。本文主要研究嘉莉妹妹追寻美国梦的动机，重点从主观因素和客观因素两方面探索这些因素如何影响到嘉莉的生活以及她的各种选择，这些对嘉莉追求美国梦的动机的分析及解析反过来又折射了她所处时代的文化。

关键词： 《嘉莉妹妹》;嘉莉;追寻美国梦;动机

1. Introduction
     Theodore Dreiser (June 27,1871-December 28,1945) was an American Naturalism writer. He was born in a Germany American family of Hoosier State and the famous speechwriter Paul Dresser was his brother. From 1889 to 1890, Theodore quit from Indiana University due to the failure in texts. Within several years, he began to write for Chicago Globe and then the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1892, he married Sara White and separated with her in 1909 without formal divorce. Sister Carrie was his first novel and his second novel Jennie Gerhardt was published in the next year. With the same point, Dreiser's several following novels were referred to the unfair phenomena about the society. As his first successful novel, An American Tragedy was took into movies in 1931 and 1951. The representative works of his novels are: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, An American Tragedy, Trilogy of Desire, The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic.