Theodore Dreiser - The Second Essay

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Dreiser's "Second Choice" jolts Shirley out of her "lower-middle-class complacency by Arthur, a dashing, romantic newcomer who woos, wins, and leaves her. Love, Shirley suddenly finds, is excitement, defined by Arthur as freedom, movement, exploration," and a different way of being in the world (Harris 73). When Arthur leaves her, instead of using this reinvigorated sense of purpose to change her own life, her inability to win Arthur causes Shirley to regard "herself as a failure because in his eyes, she is worthless" (Harris 73). Shirley engages in an act of self-punishment, forcing herself to settle for a "steady, phlegmatic suitor, and resume the life she had abandoned when Arthur appeared.

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'What's the use?'" she asks herself (Harris 73). Dreiser does not endorse this sense of ineffectualness, merely depicts it as a sad warning to the reader as something that is, like the town itself, "commonplace." By showing the sadness and commonness of such choices in human nature, Dreiser encourages the reader to change his or her own life and assumptions.

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