Sister Carrie 2

Even though Sister Carrie goes through hard times, she eventually finds fame and fortune in the end. However, even with her material success she still feels like she is missing something. The characters in this book are all so greedy, I can't tell if what they feel for one another is real, or if they just need to possess something. Sister Carrie spends the entire book wanting more material things than what she has, so she doesn't even seem to notice what she is really missing. She has two men in her life, and she seems to care a little for each of them, but she doesn't care enough for them to be content with just them. Also, they care for her, but they see her more as a possession. I think at one point both men have some feelings for her, but none of them are real. I feel like they only want her out of greed.  

City of Corruption or City of Fancy

From the beginning the narrator seems to indicate the Carrie’s undoing would happen in the city. The narrator seems to infer that there is a certain innocence that outsiders from the city innately possess, that is easily corrupted,

The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light wooing and fascinating the eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal sounds. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breath into the unguarded ear! (1)

The city seems to corrupt the purity of all its new comers. And the narrator is sure to tell us his take when comes to the moral position of the main character, Carrie Meeber. It seems like the narrator pronounces certain ideals and seems to indicate Carrie’s spiraling moral status as she grows in age and maturity.

While the narrator seems to imply that Carrie’s corruption came from moving to the city, one might argue that Carrie innately had a fatal flaw that is easy to fall to—the desire for entertainment and material possession (wealth). It follows that the city merely fed her desires, but it did not cause her fall. The narrator describes her in the very beginning saying, “…She was interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things” (2). As a young woman, living with her sister and brother in law she was not entertained by their hum—drum routine of work and rest.   Before she even had her first day of work she wished to go to the theater. She was drawn in by the city, its bright colors and noise because it fed her fancy.

I Apologize in Advance for My (Slightly) Feminist Rant

Why are all the female characters we read about so weak? They are unable to make decisions for themselves. As Dreiser says, “When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse” (1). But why are these her only two options? Why does a girl of eighteen, or any age for that matter, need someone to save her? She is more than capable of saving herself. I don’t like the way women are portrayed as inferior to men, sorry my feminist hackles are slightly raised right now and I have to write this post. Sister Carrie, even though she is eighteen and self-absorbed, can make all of her own decisions and does not need saving because she will be just fine.

Also, I found it interesting that, on the first page, Dreiser makes a vague Shakespeare reference. “Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions” (1). Which is a lot like what Orsino says to Viola in Twelfth Night or What You Will Act II Scene 4: “For women are as roses, whose fair flow’r / Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour” (II.4). Why do so many people believe that women cannot stay beautiful for a prolonged period of time? We can be beautiful, and are beautiful, until the day we die!! I’m mad and I apologize for my ranting.

Hey, I have WiFi this time. Cool.

I am only about 100 pages in, but already I am starting to see the connections of sexuality in Sister Carrie with the sexuality of McTeague.  It is consistent with the idea that “chance” or even Fate had put Carrie and Drouet on the train together; that Drouet by mere chance sees Carrie from across the street.  Within Carrie there seems a similar sort of tension with Drouet to that Trina has in her initial encounters with McTeague.  Carrie also goes through chances quickly once she gives into the money that Drouet offers her.  This is inverse order to the way Trina and McTeague’s changes occur: for them it begins with caving into physical desires; for Carrie and Drouet, it starts with money but escalates to the physical. 

I don’t want to spend my whole blog comparing the two novels, but I figured it would be a good place to start since Dr. Mitchell had made mention of the similarities of addressing sexuality in the novels. 

I think perhaps my favorite section of the reading so far has been Dreiser’s description of habit:

“Habits are peculiar things.  They will drive the really nonreligious mind out of bed to say prayers that are only a custom and not a devotion.  The victim of habit, when he has neglected the thing which it was his custom to do, feels a little scratching in the brain, a little irritating something of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness” (57).

Oh…I am about to fail at not comparing the two novels…because Norris made mention of religiousness once in McTeague, while Dreiser mentions something about religiosity several times within the first 100 pages.  Basically all I am wondering is if that is the difference between writers within the time or if there was not a standard concerning religiousness during the time. 

Anyway, back to habit…I enjoy the way Dreiser uses this description.  He defines habit according to his standards, gives it a meaning within the novel, and then he refers back to the term “habit” on several occasions when he goes to describe characters he introduces.  He also does something similar with several other terms.  I like it; by doing so he creates his own definitions to work from in the novel, rather than a dictionary definition.  Not that he ditches meaning; he keeps the dictionary definition, he isn’t changing words, but he is giving them a specific function within the narrative. 

So far, this novel feels like a sociological experiment—and far less grotesque than McTeague, which is refreshing…then again, I am only 100 pages into it…

Illusion

Why is the transition to realism and modernism an ideal period for marriage conflict? As a guy, I sometimes find it difficult to be whisked into an emotional tangle like Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Unfortunately, watching Gatsby recently prepared me to understand it more. I am not sure I can handle another conflict over a woman.

At the end of chapter 21, Dreiser writes of Hurstwood, “The manager started, hit as he was by a problem which was more difficult than hers. He gave no sign of the thoughts that flashed like messages to his mind” (144). He does indeed have a problem. He’s a married man who wants to marry another girl. Not that it’s acceptable, but he does not even want to divorce the woman he has now. It seems that his distaste for her promotes her ill temper, which is why he dislikes her anyway. Come on, man.

And Carrie. I’m not sure how I feel about her. I know she’s been caught up in big Chicago. The men initially attract her because they can take care of her, not because they care for her. A lot of her troubles have begun because of Minnie and Hanson’s frugality, of course, but the poor girl needs to realize the trouble she’s entered.

I suppose she cannot be expected to avoid the problem if the men haven’t given her any hints at all. They’re built on illusions. The entire Gatsby affair confronted the same problem—the illusions of the emerging big city. Despite the façade, illusion runs deeply into every pore of life, including marriage.  I just hope Carrie prevents the same violent ending.

Naturally Fresh

New Criticism: a method of literary evaluation and interpretation practiced chiefly in the mid-20th century that emphasizes close examination of a text with minimum regard for the biographical or historical circumstances in which it was produced. (American Heritage definition)

The definition above refers to a dominant form of literary theory that, although developed in the 20’s and 30’s, most certainly took its cues from American naturalism. It is time and period appropriate, as the criticism was born in America and featured American writers and thinkers almost exclusively. Our own Dr. Mitchell is very much a New Critic (note the way in which he has us analyze the texts and write papers) and part of the reason why this form of criticism flourishes in naturalism is because the text logically lends itself to close readings divorced from time/place and the intentions of the author. Remember how The Red Badge of Courage detailed several skirmishes of the Civil War without ever disclosing the location of the battles, the people involved, or the author’s own political opinions. McTeague most certainly took place in San Francisco, yet presented its characters and circumstances from an objective and unbiased viewpoint while shielding the opinions of the author.

Sister Carrie is no different but in fact exemplifies these virtues just as much as the others. Though it clearly takes place in Chicago, the novel bears no socioeconomic critique of the city or its industrialist policies. The narrator details many different aspects and historical elements of life in the city in a neutral tone of voice that hides the narrator’s true feelings about the circumstances. Authors like Dickens and Orwell wrote in such a manner that one cannot help but discuss their socioeconomic goals, but a close reading of Sister Carrie tells you nothing about Theodore Dreiser – this is by design. Instead of making direct statements about morality or ethics, Dreiser instead presents the character’s emotional and mental processes as impartially as he possibly can, creating a sort of omniscient documentary that seeks not to prove a point but present living facts. This ties back into New Criticism because proponents of this theory read literature with no mind for the author’s intentions or what outside circumstances brought the text itself because all that matters is the text itself. Likewise for the naturalist, all that matters is life and humanity itself, so that’s all that you get – as Dreiser seeks to prove, that’s all you really need.

Sister Carrie 1

This book reminds me of two words, consumerism and materialistic. From the very first page, we already know the type of person Sister Carrie is. She is materialistic, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have nice things, but Sister Carrie may be a little more caught up in that idea than she should be. Right off the bat, the narrator makes sure to bring attention to Sister Carrie’s fake purse. She is so caught up with trying to have the best of everything that she buys a knock-off purse so that people think she has money. 

Sister Carrie isn’t the only person in this book who puts money above everything. Sister Carrie’s sister and brother-in-law are also very materialistic. At first, they seems like a conservative people who are looking out for Sister Carrie. Minnie tries to suggest they do free things for entertainment, and her husband makes sure Sister Carrie budgets her money for car fair when she goes to work. We find out later that the only reason Sister Carrie is staying with them is so she can help supplement their income. They want money out of her, they do not simply want the comfort of family.

This book is about consumerism. It shows how much people want to have nice possessions, and how they will do anything to be able to buy those possessions. Sister Carries works all day at a job that she doesn’t like, and by the time she pays her sister and buys food and whatnot, she has barely any money left to buy any of the nice things she wants. Her sister lures Sister Carrie in under the pretense that she is visiting a loving sister only to realize, her sister just needs her to help foot the bills.  

I have come to the conclusion that WiFi and I will forever be enemies.

I have not read a novel in a while that has made my jaw physically drop from the shock of words I read, but McTeague has given my jaw quite a work out.  The content itself is not really that shocking, but when the first half of the novel is taken into consideration, it does get a bit obnoxious.  

I think more than anything I am shocked by how long Trina is allowed to go on in her miserly-ways while McTeague does not do anything about it until much later--and by then it is very extreme...because he kills her.  Oddly, it almost feels justified (and somewhat relieving) when McTeague kills Trina, which makes it scary as the reader to be okay with actions I know to be wrong.  But before she was killed, I kept wondering when someone was going to do something about Trina's behavior.  It is overwhelming to read about greed of that degree and see how it infects a person.  Their whole marriage looked more like cohabitation rather than a situation where “two become one.”  Trina repeatedly referred to the money as hers, would correct herself, then call it “ours”—but the heart of the issue never changed.  She always saw the money as hers and hers alone. 

Consider how Trina handles herself and then consider how she handles money.  For some time, she physically withheld herself from McTeague before the day of the kiss.  After the kiss, she decides to give herself over in marriage.  But the moment she physically surrenders to him, everything outside of her person becomes an object she must take in to fill what had been lost in physically giving in to McTeague.  The only difference between a prude and a miser is the difference between sex and money.  The motive and result of the action is the same internal decision: to withhold from another person, who in this case is her husband.  

Chaos, Chaos Everywhere

Last week, I wrote about how uncomfortable I got reading McTeague, this week, I am going to write about how chaos unfolds throughout the novel. It starts with a kiss, albeit, a nonconsensual kiss that the other party knows nothing about; which is a chaotic event because of what happens in the moments leading up to the kiss. McTeague then decides he is going to marry Trina despite the fact that she has already denied his proposal, and sets off to do just that. After a strange day spent in the company of her family, which is a chaotic excursion to say the least, McTeague spends the night in her room and fawns over every item that he knows belongs to her. Then, after Trina and McTeague gets married, the chaos spirals out of control. Trina begins hoarding her money like a miser and won’t let McTeague use any money that she believes belongs to her. McTeague and Marcus get into a fight because Marcus is still in love with Trina which leads to Marcus leaving town and telling the authorities that McTeague doesn’t have a license to practice dentistry. Once McTeague loses his practice, Trina continues to hoard her money which leads to McTeague robbing her, running away, and eventually killing her. And of course, the novel wouldn’t be complete without McTeague killing Marcus in the middle of Death Valley and eventually dying himself, or at least I’m pretty sure he will die, because he is handcuffed to Marcus’ dead body. All of these events are completely chaotic and all stem from McTeague being unable to handle change.

Death&Death&Death

The ending to McTeague by Frank Norris is disturbing to say the least. McTeague’s struggles finally overtake him. Despite his early desires to suppress the wild giant inside him, the big bad blonde man succeeds in annihilating himself, his friends, and the entire world he knows as Norris writes: “McTeague did not know how he killed is enemy, but all at once Marcus grew still beneath his blows. Then there was a sudden last return of energy. McTeague’s right wrist was caught; something clicked upon it’ then the struggling body fell limp and motionless with a long breath” (347).  McTeague had blindly destroyed and had been destroyed.

In the end, Marcus represents the baggage that McTeague could never rid from himself. Norris emphasizes Mac’s inescapable old life, using Marcus to capture McTeague in the end. The money had made Mac crave a higher position, but to achieve it, he would necessarily abandon the life he had always known. Marcus, even in death, ensures that MacTeague cannot escape with his corrupt desires.

The reader must remember what started the collapse. Norris reminds the reader continually during the second half of his novel. The money undoubtedly corrupts them all. Trina rolls in her own gold. MacTeague twice steals money from Trina and twice kills for money (Trina and Marcus). Marcus challenges McTeague, betting his own life for the sack of money McTeague had stolen.

The reader must ask what Norris really desires to convey. Is it the evil of money in itself? Is it the ever-growing industrial world that allows money to accumulate?

McTeague: The End

I did not see the end of this book coming at all. I can't believe Mac killed Trina. Although, I should have known something like this would happen. Any time there is so many greedy people together in one place something bad always happens. This book is proof that loving money brings nothing but evil. Every person in this book who lets greed get the best of them ends up in bad situations.

Even with all the death, I love the end of the book. At the beginning of the book Mac is kind of likable, but he changes. I just wanted him to get what was coming to him. So, I love that after he kills Marcus, he finds himself handcuffed to the body. I thought it was hilarious and very fitting. Wether he dies or gets caught, we know karma gives him what he deserves.

McTeague - LIVE!

         This blog entry is a little more conceptual and imaginative in nature, but is based in my close reading of the text so bear with me.

           As we all saw in class last Monday, a silent film directly based on McTeague was created back in the 20’s called Greed, and while it was built up to be and was received as a critical success it was a failure in the box office. In my opinion, I think it could do better as a stage production or even an opera, where, unlike the director of Greed, one has more licenses to be lengthy and may create truly something truly artistic & inspired, which is much harder to accomplish in Hollywood. McTeague, or perhaps an alternative title of Animals, would take its cues directly from the major parts of the text and would be structured as follows:

               
Act I: Meet McTeague – lottery winner – the wedding night (Ch.1-9)

Act II: Start married life – start of poverty – Trina’s death (Ch. 10-19)
Act III: The mines – the wasteland – finale (Ch. 20-22)

The first act introduces us to the main characters and the primary setting of San Francisco, the dramatic premise starts to develop (greed and lechery), the inciting incident occurs (the lottery), and it ends with McTeague and Trina’s honeymoon scene. The second act begins with the two living happily initially but sharply spirals into poverty and madness, finally ending with Trina’s brutal murder at Mac’s hands. In this act we have the lowest valley of the novel and its greatest complications to the story (poverty, Trina in bed with her money, McTeague’s fall into animalism) and ends with the novel’s most damning and dramatic decision (Trina’s murder). The significantly shorter third act takes place entirely in the desert and the focus here is on McTeague as a runaway, digging for gold in the wasteland and dealing with his guilt, which gives the audience a false sense of denouement before his frenzied flight through the alkali flats and the climactic final confrontation with Marcus puts on the edge of their seats and them shocks them with its terrifying and absurd conclusion.
          The tone of the play is intense and gritty, dark without being gothic in nature, and ultimately tragic without being sympathetic. Think something in line with a Tennessee Williams or an Arthur Miller and you know the direction that I'm going for. This all to argue my point that it is better to reinterpret a novel onstage than on film, especially a naturalist novel.

Frank's Fourth Circle of Hell

            In the first half of McTeague by Frank Norris, one passage summarizes the progression of McTeague and his friends:

“All at once there was a report like a pistol. The men started in their places. Mrs. Sieppe uttered a muffled shriek. The waiter from the cheap restaurant, hired as Maria’s assistant, rose from a bending posture, a champagne bottle frothing in his hand; he was grinning from ear to ear . . . Hardly one of them had ever tasted champagne before. The moment’s silence was broken by McTeague exclaiming with a long breath of satisfaction: ‘That’s the best beer I ever drank . . . .’” (132)

Norris juxtaposes high society, represented by champagne, with the lower class and unintelligent McTeague. His sudden draft into the high society opportunity, provided by his new wife’s small fortune, upsets the balance that he maintained before.

             The worst part is McTeague’s gradual but inescapable loss of his friend Marcus. Although he imposes himself upon McTeague early in the novel, Marcus provides the friendship McTeague desires. When Trina wins her money, however, Norris introduces a responsibility no one can handle. The money becomes everyone’s idol. Trina herself controls the money and does not surrender it to her husband. The effort appears noble, but (just as Dante illustrates in his fourth circle) a miser and a prodigal are equally greedy. One could even argue the unspent sum corrupts the group more, becoming an unseen ideal prize.

            McTeague could normally preserve hope, as he did desire Trina before she had money, but Marcus’s monetary greed forces the reader to reexamine each character’s motives. Could McTeague have wanted Trina just because Marcus had her? Norris certainly introduces the question. The rest of the novel may tell.

            

Uncomfortable Moment

         McTeague starts out innocently enough. Norris uses words that indicate a city that never changes or diverges from its schedule. McTeague himself never changes the way he does things or the day on which he does those things.

It was Sunday, and according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors’ coffee joint on Polk Street. He had a thick, gray soup; heavy, underdone mean, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to the office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna’s saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner. (1)

Within the first paragraph, Norris shows how McTeague spends his Sundays going to the same places, eating the same foods, and doing everything exactly the same as every other Sunday. However, this repetition leads to McTeague not knowing how to handle himself when something changes. This is especially true when that something includes a beautiful young woman under anesthesia. When McTeague first puts Trina under anesthesia, he feels strange animalistic urges begin to grow in him and he has to try to fight them. However, his inner struggle is one of the most uncomfortable scenes that I have ever read. I was not sure that I was really reading the words that were on the page. When he kisses her, I felt sick to my stomach. And then, he asks her to marry him. Who does that kind of thing? What was Norris trying to do? Because I really have no idea what he is trying to insinuate. I will continue reading this novel because I think I have a good paper topic for this next paper, but I am very reluctant to finish it because I know that it will only get more uncomfortable for me and I am not okay with that.

Animal Rights

           Before settling on the title of McTeague, Frank Norris had considered entitling his novel Greed instead, but I offer another alternative title that would prove just as appropriate: Animals. Animals run wild throughout the novel, either directly mentioned or implied indirectly by Norris’ syntax, and it is one of his primary means of conveying his critical intentions.

           
          As Sam has correctly noted, Norris intentionally uses the Irish setter and the Border collie to characterize Marcus and McTeague, pointing out not only the dignity of the actual beasts in relation to their human counterparts but how the two men bark and fight each other as if they were dogs. McTeague in particular is given the most beastly characterization in the novel, depicting his life before Trina as brutish and simplistically sensual and his effect on her to be one of trepidation and powerlessness. It is much like King Kong and Ann Darrow, except in this story Ann Darrow becomes just as frightening as McTeague except for much different reasons. The language employed by these people is gruff and weighty, and the motivations of most of these characters in base and pleasure-focused, designed to emulate the temporal passions of mere beasts, and in the same way that a beasts’ life is devoid of spirituality and purpose thus falls the Sententia of our central characters (a few characters’ stories will end happily, but I’ll just avoid that for now).  There is no positive connection to nature or our possible origins as animals, but a somewhat Renaissance-esque understanding of the superiority of humanity to animalism and how far we can fall into primalnality.

           All of these examples of animal behavior are meant to distinguish a difference between the realization of how humans should interact and be motivated and the stark reality of how they actually live. There is no positive connection to nature or our possible origins as animals, but a somewhat Renaissance-esque understanding of the superiority of humanity to animalism and how far we can fall into not the banal but the primal instead. It is a portrait of how humanity has been perverted by the American Dream and how we foolishly pursue base desires and hurt others in the name of greed. Norris is not interested in idealism or sentimentality, however, and uses direct imagery and clarity of purpose to create what he feels is an honest (re: negative) portrayal of the West as it has become.

Romanticism and Sexuality, Respectively

If you could combine Charles Brockden Brown with Nathaniel Hawthorne and add a pinch of “The Death of a Salesman,” I think you might get something similar to Theron Ware.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was not reading Hawthorne, this was not Young Goodman Brown, and that I was taking an America Realism and Naturalism class, instead of returning to American Romanticism.  For all its naturalism, there was so much romanticism.  But for all its romance it was romanticism explained, and I think that is what constituted to the naturalism.  To me it was like watching a scary movie without the edits, and the film crew kept popping up on the screen reminding me that it was not as romantic as I had initially thought—maybe even the TBS facts bar that kept popping up and telling me that the Soulsbys were really sideshow specials.  Things happen ever so “seemingly,” the imagery of darkness and forests that we become so familiar with in CBB and Hawthorne are immediately debunked one paragraph or page later. 

And is it just me, or are all of the male protagonists consistently somewhat dense during this literary movement?  Meanwhile, you have Isabel Archer trying to save herself and save the world without being incredibly stupid.  If you had McTeague and Lapham in the same room, we might have one lazy afternoon with some Keystone Lights and a bug zapper on a front porch in Alabama, while Theron is quite another ordeal.  He is a prude, though he doesn’t seem to want to be or at best not look like he is a prude.  I think he wants to be like Celia Madden, who reminds me an awful lot of what Isabel would like to be if she had the opportunity—but, Theron is too incredibly dense.  I just can’t help but wonder what the difference with the sexes could be at this time.  The women seem to get it, but the men don’t…meanwhile, I don’t even know what it is.  In terms of naturalism and its need to scientifically break everything apart: what is science saying about the genders, and of sexuality itself? 

I know this became more of a rant, and frankly, studying literary sexuality is not my preferred Sunday afternoon, but I can’t exactly ignore the elephant anymore.  So, Mitchell: can we talk about this gender/sexuality issue?

Several Things // McTeague

Throughout McTeague there seemed to be a constant triangle to situations as well as a consistency of things coming in threes—be they phrases or single words in the dialogue, or even Norris himself writing a sentence three times.  No, I do not have every instance marked.  Initially I did not notice, but once I did I started marking things as “x3,” and I will be glad to share tomorrow.  As far as triangular situations go, we can start with the love triangle itself among McTeague, Marcus, and Trina, soon followed by Maria Macapa, Zerkow, and gold/greed.  Once McTeague and Trina are married, the third angle is the money situation.  It is not simply a union between a man and woman, but a trinity of man, woman, and her money—though it should be theirs. 

I found the Irish setter and Scotch collie to be an interesting image in the novel.  It reminded me a little of the way John Steinbeck passes through The Grapes of Wrath by alternating each chapter from an outside-though-somewhat-related situation, then somehow mirroring it in the plot with the following chapter.  While Norris does not quite do that, this quarrel between the dogs has a similar effect.  They appear to be symbolic of Marcus and McTeague in some ways, at least they are mentioned quarreling in the yard or street before each time Marcus and McTeague hash it out.  The difference between the dogs and the humans is that the dogs resist a physical fight, though the people watching strongly desire it and encourage it; but when the two humans fight the humans observing end it, discouraging it.

Norris is fond of repetition it seems, as several passages are copies of previous passages, and he often reuses a phrase to describe something from a different perspective than it was mentioned in previously.  Naturally, I thought of Kierkegaard: “Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward; whereas the real repetition is recollected forward.”  I found this to also be reminiscent of the dogs.

Sex and the consciousness appear to me to be opposite of their portrayal in The Portrait of a Lady.  Where Mazzella says sexual possession is a threat to the consciousness, it seems Norris is saying sex brings the stupid and unconscious to their consciousness.  Where marriage was a detriment to Isabel’s consciousness, Trina and McTeague are more conscious within marriage…or Trina is at the very least.  

                                             Much Less Ministry

           

          Harold Frederic presents Theron Ware as a typical, young minister, who is fresh into the field that he supposedly dedicated his life to. As one choice leads to another, this man is eventually damned and led out of the ministry. This is the result from him trying to change who he is for the sake of pleasing others. He is a shallow and hollow man at heart; he is lucky to have his wife with him at the end of the story. Frederic presents Theron in such a way that it would appear that his circumstances are what damns him, but this is not true. Theron damns himself through and through, with one of the main reasons being his mistrust of his wife and his intellectual infatuation with Celia Madden. She partially damned him, but it is his own fault for fantasizing about her and raising her to the level of a goddess in his mind. This craven man has no substance to call his own, and he is so worried about what others may think about him that it eventually tears him to pieces.

            It is easy to see why Theron cannot make it in the ministry, but why did Frederic put him there in the first place? Theron has so much potential to be a great minister, but he gets swept away by the world and his own desires before he can fully realize his position as a minister. Theron later claims that he is not built for the ministry, but the real issue is that the ministry is not built for him. He begins as a down to earth man who trusts his supportive wife; they live on little, and that is enough for them. But after he sees the luxury of Father Forbes, he begins falling morally. This fall is climaxed during his evening near the piano of Celia and then even further at the two separate church meetings in the woods, where he sees Catholics drinking alcohol and then wanders off with Celia. Theron does not know how to guard his heart against fleshly desires; a weak-hearted man like him can never thrive as a minister, who is supposed to lead his flock by example. Frederic permits Theron to fall in order to show the reader that innocence can be easily lost when a person succumbs to the pressures of the world. Though one could argue that Theron was never innocent to begin with, but merely playing the part of the innocent Christian man. The poor cretin might have made it as a pastor if he just relied on God and his wife more, rather than being so heavily influenced by others. One could also say that he does not honor his marriage as a Christian man should, and this is the reason that he damned himself. Either way, Frederic permits Theron to fall because he succumbs to the desires of his flesh and betrays his position as a minister. He is an example of the world getting the best of a weak Christian, and this is why Frederic puts him in a position to have his faith tested.