The Living Situation Affects Carrie's Moral Judgements

The Living Situation Affects Carrie’s Moral Judgements In Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Carrie Meeber, a poor young provincial girl without too much life and working experience, comes to alluring Chicago alone. She is with hope and dream. She wants live in a high level life in urban, yet she must suit the law of the jungle. At the same time, she has to face two choices: “Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, to rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse (Dreiser 86).” As an innocent type, Carrie could face difficulties maintaining her moral principle in a dog-eat-dog world, therefore, Carrie’s moral judgements were challenged by her living environment. For Carrie, the current priority issue is how to survive in the city. The city is flourishing and isolated. She desires to feel warmth, understanding, and supporting but in vain. Without time to adapt the new environment of living or appreciate the great prosperity of the city, she is urged to devote herself to look for a job. Otherwise, she cannot pay for her callous brother in law’s rent; she does not have money to buy a heavy coat to protect her away from the cold

Looking for a job is not an easy mission, especially for a young girl who does not have any working experience. She has never worked in a factory and does not know how to type. Although she is hired by a shoes factory as a worker finally, her job is unsatisfactory, a too low salary, too terrible working environment, and too tired. She is ill and removed by the factory immediately. Her inner world is frustrated and her moral judgements are unstable. In addition, her sister’s life is like a mirror and seems to tell her future life — nonstop working hard but still living in a so small and ragged space with her husband and child. This life is not she wanted and she feels disillusioned with honest and diligent overworked