Rating: 
Summary: LOVED IT LOVED IT LOVED IT
Review: This book was incredible....Page by page, you go thru life with Carrie..I think at one point or another we have all had feelings of "wow" when seeing the exclusive lifestyles of the upper class..However we do not realize at that moment that money does not buy happiness...Carrie not only had those feelings but she was completely obsessed with it...The main morals of the story in this book is "things are not what they seem" , "the grass is not always greener on the other side" , and "money does not buy happiness"...We also see what circumstances Hurstwood finds himself in after he leaves his family for a "young lust"....In Sister Carrie we see how it is to go up the social ladder as well as to go down...and neither is a journey worth traveling ! I would have liked to read more about Carrie's family back home and Hurstwood's abandoned family.... This book was incredible......Dreiser is a GREAT GREAT writer, there were some lines that I reread 2-3 times because i was so touched by his writing... Read this book !
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant realist novel!
Review: Am I ever happy I was assigned this by my english teacher! Dreiser is indeed a fabulous writer in the sense that he has thought of something this brilliant. Carrie's adventures through her young-adult life fascinated me beyond belief, and I could never tell where in the world it would lead her next. There is nothing that I can give bad criticism in this story, except for the fact that some of the characters were disagreeable to me. But that is the beauty of Dreiser's work: you don't know who in the world to like or to hate, to believe or to not, for that is realism. A great read!
Rating: 
Summary: Dreiser's Sister Carrie
Review: The pursuit of happiness may be the dominating adventure in the life of all men. For over three centuries, Americans have linked happiness with wealth and success. In Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Carrie is consistently seeking out this "American Dream." Dreiser forces the reader to confront the question-- "What will bring man fulfillment?" This novel is devoted to pointing out that fulfillment does not come from material objects, but from honest labor. Sister Carrie follows the life of Carrie, in the last part of the 19th century, as she moves up from a small town girl to a Broadway star. Dreiser's simple style makes this book easy to understand. Due to Dreiser's lack of formal education, the language is a bit choppy. This lack of education, however, does not interfere with the power of this story. He reiterates his theme of materialism versus fulfillment with many metaphors. For example, he compares fortune to an organism--something that draws on the strength of outside sources. Dreiser's use of metaphors and his intense character developments makes this book enjoyable. It is a rags to riches story that does not lead to inner satisfaction. If you enjoy long books about women of the past, you must read this. It is not only valuable for its revelations of timeless truths, but also its history.
Rating:
Summary: A New Light On The Pursuit of Happiness
Review: Sister Carrie is an epic story of destruction and dissatisfaction when a person's self is centered around possessions. Dreiser tells the story fo Carrie's rise from rags to riches beautifully by incorporating vivid similes and metephors that capture the wealth Carrie yearns for. The main theme throughout the novel is the pursuit of happiness and the endless dissatisfaction that occurs when you base your self on wealth and status. We follow Carrie as she dreams of a higher position, receives it, is not quite happy, dreams of an even higher position, receives it, and the cycle continues never finding Carrie content. Dreiser developes the characters so beautifully you feel you truly know them. Life is presented as it really is. Dreiser gives very detailed accounts of the setting and continually gives insightful comments on situations, society, and character motives to effectively pull in the reader. Another important theme running through the novel is one of creating society as a show or play. Everyone is an actor. This is really effective as Dreiser illustrates the fact that people become what they must in order to get what they want. However, this theme is presented in a setting where the city becomes symbolic for all the corruption that occurs when presented with luxury. I loved this book and could really identify with the characters. In the latter half of the novel, Dreiser's juxtapostion of one character's assent to fame and the another's decent into poverty was so moving I do not believe I will ever forget it. The idea that the pursuit of happiness through worldly goods will lead to endless dissatisfaction was very insightful and moving throughout the novel. I would suggest this book to anyone, especially to those would love to be swept away by a beautiful yet realistic tale of wealth and corruption.
Rating:
Summary: Dreiser's novel is compelling and leaves a lasting impact
Review: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie is a wonderful novel to read, especially for those interested in stories about the past and women. This turn of the century novel, which was highly controversial at its time, contains truths that pertain to people at all times and for all ages. Dreiser does an excellent job of making the reader feel as if he is a part of the industrialized, late 19th century America. But he does an even better job of creating a sense of the details of the setting. Everything a character is seeing the reader is able to see just as well. Dreiser uses a great deal of imagery to communicate the characters' visions of even the finest details. This can also be said in regard to the characters' feelings and thoughts. Dreiser carries the reader into the deepest realms of the minds of the central characters. For this, Dreiser uses many symbols and metaphors to follow the characters' successes, failures, and motives. Although Dreiser is inarticulate at times and far too wordy at others, the effect of the novel still comes through. Dreiser also inserts many of his own philosophies into the novel and at times they come across as lectures to the reader. But by doing this, Dreiser has clearly become just as involved with his characters as he makes the reader. This is one of those books in which it's message, more than presentation, will stay with the reader for weeks after its completion. So despite the nagging criticisms of Dreiser's critical contemporaries, he still skillfully wrote the story of a young girl's struggle to succeed in America and her attempts to overcome any obstacles that would try to stop her.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly the greatest novel in American literature
Review: Somewhere in the depths of time a critic once labeled playwright Eugene O'Neill a genius with no talent. It's a description that could just as easily fit Theodore Dreiser, an uneducated, mercurial man who, while still in his twenties, and with virtually no experience composing fiction, managed to crank out what I consider one of the greatest novels in American literature. Very few authors have ever managed to generate the raw power that Dreiser does over the 500 or so pages of "Sister Carrie." It is amazing how much of the human experience he has put into this book, how well he understands the hopes, fears, and desires--mysterious and contradictory as they often are--that drive ordinary people.The conventional judgment on Dreiser puts him in the naturalistic, social-realist tradition of Zola and Hardy. There is much in this; but I think his real strength lies in depicting character--Carrie, Hurstwood, and Drouet really come alive in these pages. His characters possess a depth and complexity of feeling that one rarely finds in fiction. Dreiser has a melancholy, fatalistic sense that the world may be too vast and impersonal for people to live in it comfortably, and yet his world is vibrantly human as well. I personally find Carrie a more likable heroine (if you could call her that) than many readers have. She is self-absorbed, yes, but also capable of compassion for others, and she is never intentionally cruel. Like all of Dreiser's characters she is somewhere between the angels and the devils. This is by no means a perfect book. Dreiser's rhetorical flourishes can become absolutely ridiculous, and so can his habit of injecting philosophical commentary into the texture of the narrative. But the total effect of "Sister Carrie" is powerful, and more than compensates for any defects in the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Accurate portrayal of American life at this time, good read.
Review: This book was written at the turn of the century and it is a great portrait of American life and ideals at that time. It is the story of a young girl named Carrie who leaves her small town to go to Chicago to live with her sister and find work. She soon finds that living with her sister and her husband is very boring and that work is hard and dull. Soon she is a mistress of a pretty wealthy man, and the rest of the book is the story of her rise in society. One of the main themes of this book is materialism, and how people would do anything for money. During the book I could see how innocent Carrie becomes a victim of circumstances as she tries to fit into the environment around her and becomes swallowed by the anonymity of the city. I love Dreiser's style, although he goes off on unneccessary little lectures at times, and I really liked following the plot. The characters were drawn so well that I would forget they weren't real. This is a great book to read and it accurately portrays American cities at the rise of industrialism and materialism.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but problematic
Review: I really liked Sister Carrie. It is a story about a woman living in the big city (or cities), at times dependent upon men with intentions different from hers, and eventually on her own. Carrie doesn't seem to have any particular "Big Dream". However, she is enamored by wealth and success, and this infatuation leads to her relationships with the drummer Drouet and the tavern manager Hurstwood. Carrie also has an interest in drama, although it never manifests itself as a career dream; it merely becomes an enjoyable means to an end (i.e., wealth). She has struggles, obtains some success, but does she achieve her dream? This book portrays how both struggle for and the realization of an ideal can be a problem. The relationships Carrie has with Drouet and Hurstwood are interesting, as she is strung along by both while at the same time knowing that these relationships are somewhat suspect anyway. Drouet wants an attractive girl on his arm (but no wedding ring) while Hurstwood will do anything (even acts of blatant duplicity) to have the attractive woman as his own. The reason that I subtract a star for the book is because some turning points of the plot are incomprehensible, which is a problem that I have with Dreiser's An American Tragedy. For instance, Hurstwood's pretense for getting Carrie on a train to Canada was unbelievable. How could Carrie possibly be fooled into this situation? Then Hurstwood becomes reluctant to find employment at a lower position in his field of work (due to pride?) then becomes a scab for the NYMTA (or its turn of the century equivalent). Hurstwood doesn't want to be a bartender (where he has experience and at least a possibility of success), but he'll be a train operator while dodging rocks and blows thrown by strikers. It's a good book, but it takes some effort to overcome some of the plot elements, which don't make any sense.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but with some flaws
Review: A few months back, I read An American Tragedy, and while I enjoyed the story, certain things that Dreiser tries to do with the plot just didn't work for me. However, I decided that I would give Dreiser another try by reading Sister Carrie. I enjoyed Sister Carrie, but the same problems existed. Sister Carrie is about a young woman who moves to Chicago, and when her financial situation becomes tenuous, she becomes involved with a salesman (Drouet) who sets her up in an apartment and spends money on her. He repeatedly promises to marry her, but both of them know that this is not true. She's living comfortably and goes out often; he's got a girlfriend without any long term commitment. Carrie eventually leaves this man under some questionable circumstances and goes off to New York City with a fairly well off married man, Hurstwood. Dreiser depicts how Hurstwood is in love with Carrie, while at the same time Hurstwood repeatedly lies to her (concealing the fact that he is married, that he stole $10,000 from his workplace, and, of course, that he will marry her). In New York, both Hurstwood and Carrie find themselves in an unusual situation. Hurstwood no longer has the prominent position he held in Chicago, and Carrie is living with a man in an unknown city and has no social life. Things start going bad for Hurstwood, and Carrie realizes that she must rely on herself. Carrie follows a dream realized briefly earlier in the story and tries her hand at acting. I really enjoyed how the story of a woman obtaining independence, even though it leaves her disenchanted. While I found the story as a whole to be very good, some aspects of the plot were questionable. Hurstwood's theft and his downward spiral really come without any explanation. The "circumstances" that are supposed to be integral to the development of Dreiser's stories are hardly apparent in these two important situations (although Dreiser makes a superficial attempt at explaining). I also had trouble with Carrie and Hurstwood's departure from Chicago, as it seems highly unlikely that someone could be fooled into taking a train on the pretense of going to some unknown hospital to see Drouet who had an undisclosed emergency (which somehow happens with Carrie). Once again, I found myself reading an entertaining story with some incomprehensible plot turns. While I found these elements bothersome, the rest of the book was good enough for me to overlook them.
Rating:
Summary: fascinatingly beautiful
Review: Living an average middle-class life, I have always wondered how the very rich and the very poor get where they are. Sister Carrie is a beautifully written and fascinating tale of how one climbs and descends the social ladder of life. I am aware that some readers have criticized this book stating that Dreiser did not develop the characters very well and that Carrie was not very likeable. Well, it is my thought that Dreiser never intended for us to become solely wrapped within the characters. He meant for us to become enveloped in the circumstance. The two main characters, Carrie and Hurstwood, are truly victims of circumstance - Carrie's never-ending unhappiness and Hurstwood's downward spiral. As we go through life, there are so many events and choices that will guide our lives to what they are. When one stops and thinks about this, it is really quite fascinating. I believe Dreiser r was aware of this aspect of life and he wanted to write a novel that would effect the lives of everyone who reads it. I read the entire book in 3 days. I simply could not put it down. I recommend Sister Carrie to everyone. It will leave you thinking and thinking and thinking.
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