Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

Contributing Editors:
James M. Hutchisson and
James L. W. West III

Classroom Issues and Strategies

Dreiser's style is unconventional. If students have heard of him, they've heard that he's a clumsy stylist. They also will have difficulty understanding Ida's dilemma in "Typhoon."

The instructor should explain that Dreiser was trained as a journalist whose main duty was to record the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story. Graceful style was a small concern. In fact, some of Dreiser's verbal clumsiness was more or less deliberate. His writing possesses its particular power, its ability to move the emotions, in part because of its bluntness, its lack of grace. Try to imagine "Typhoon" told by a facile stylist, for example, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It would lose much of its voltage.

It's a good idea to show students how thoroughly trapped and damned Ida Zobel is by an illicit pregnancy. Children of the 1990s will likely try to foist their own standards back onto her time and place. Students identify with this story because they feel much peer pressure in matters of sex. Ask them to try to argue sympathetically for Hauptfuhrer. Can it be done? Where did Dreiser's sympathies lie?

Another good theme to discuss is Ida's being "forgiven" by the public, her almost automatic innocence before the court, and her adoption by the wealthy socialite. Dreiser is indicating some things here about the influence of the fourth estate over the administration of justice. We sympathize with Ida, of course, but her exoneration for the killing is suspect. Certainly she still feels great guilt; it is the major motivation for her suicide.

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues

Like virtually all of Dreiser's major characters, Ida Zobel in "Typhoon" is a seeker. She searches for beauty and love in a repressive, unenlightened society. She is ignorant and at the mercy of instincts and drives that she does not understand. She is naive enough to be duped by Hauptfuhrer largely because of her obsessively sheltered upbringing. This was ever one of Dreiser's major themes--his hatred of repressiveness and its consequences. The theme fits in well with the general rebelliousness and nonconformity of American writers of his generation and the generation following it.

Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions

Dreiser is best taught as a writer who held philosophically conflicting ideas in suspension simultaneously. His best writing springs from the tensions generated by these opposing ideas. On the one hand he was virtually a textbook naturalist; on the other, a mystic, romantic, and sentimental writer. He was also a left-leaning social activist, a stance which, strictly speaking, is incompatible with naturalistic beliefs.

Original Audience

The instructor should emphasize that this story was magazine fiction, written to sell. In it, Dreiser was dealing with sensational tabloid material. The story was written in 1926 in order to follow up on the great success of An American Tragedy, published in 1925 and also based on a real murder case. The story borrows elements from the Tragedy--also from Sister Carrie (1900) and Jennie Gerhardt (1911), Dreiser's first two novels.

Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections

This story is written in Dreiser's late style, a fragmented, free-association style that attempts to accomplish many of the same things that stream-of-consciousness writers like James Joyce and William Faulkner were trying to do during the 1920s. Dreiser may have known of Ulysses; Faulkner wasn't really on the scene yet. Dreiser had been reading Freud and was much interested in the workings of the subconscious mind. One can teach this story as an example of early stream-of-consciousness writing.

Questions for Reading and Discussion/ Approaches to Writing

1. Ask students to reflect on the following before class: guilt and innocence; "peer pressure"; the narrative voice--is it slanted or objective?

2. Have them read a big-city newspaper of the period on microfilm and find similarly sensational material. They might compare the style of reporting ca. 1926 with the style used today and reflect on what this says about changes in American society over the past sixty years.

Another useful topic is a discussion of free will as it operates (or does not) in "Typhoon." Are these characters in control of their destinies?

A good short theme can be developed on the last line of the story. How does it resonate back through the entire narrative?

Bibliography

Gerber, Philip. "Theodore Dreiser." Biographical sketch in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 9. Detroit: Gale, 1981.

Griffin, Joseph. The Small Canvas: An Introduction to Dreiser's Short Stories. Fairleigh Dickinson, 1985.

Hutchisson, James M. "The Composition and Publication of 'Another American Tragedy': Dreiser's 'Typhoon.' " Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 81: 1 (1987).