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Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sister Carrie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Urban Life and Decay
Morality and Instinct
Wealth and Class
Summary
Analysis
Drouet never gets around to visiting Carrie. He is having a “gay time” dining at Rector’s, “a restaurant of some local fame,” and visiting Fitzgerald and Moy’s, a high-class saloon. These establishments represent, for Drouet, a part of “high life—a fair sample of what the whole must be.” Though Drouet is not “a moneyed man,” he has a penchant for nice clothes, good food, and fine company—particularly that of ultra-successful men. He frequents these establishments because they stir his ambitions and put him in the same space as the wealthy.
Drouet proves himself a dandy—he has already forgotten Carrie and is too busy visiting various establishments around Chicago for entertainment. From these visits, readers can tell that he is most definitely more financially comfortable than Minnie and Hanson. Drouet is similar to Carrie in that he equates wealth with goodness. He enjoys being in the company of the rich and successful and longs to be a part of them.
Themes
Drouet meets G. W. Hurstwood, manager of Fitzgerald and Moy’s, at Rector’s. Hurstwood, a stylish man in his late thirties, is “a very successful and well-known man about town.” Drouet considers him “some one worth knowing.” With a combination of “perseverance and industry,” Hurstwood was able to go from being a bartender at an ordinary saloon to his managerial position at Fitzgerald and Moy’s.
Chicago is a place where connections are important. Drouet feels it necessary to be connected to Hurstwood because the manager himself is well connected and known “about town.” It appears that in places like saloons, men can meet and form business connections with one another.
Themes
Hurstwood typically spends his time greeting people with tactfully, using more charm on “those noted or rich.” However, Hurstwood finds his most favored form of companionship in those who are “neither rich nor poor, famous, nor yet remarkably successful, with whom he was friendly on the score of good fellowship.” He has a wife and two children established on the north side of Lincoln park and is upper-class though not quite “luxuriously rich.”
Hurstwood is the most comfortably established character in the novel thus far. He is rich, holds a good job, and has a family. He is, nevertheless, not yet among the richest. Hurstwood and Drouet’s life form a sharp contrast with the lives of Carrie, Minnie, and Hanson. These two, like Hanson and Carrie, work; however, they also know the pleasures of leisure and entertainment.
Themes
Hurstwood likes Drouet for his amiability. The two drink together at the bar and briefly talk about Drouet’s past and upcoming trips as well as their mutual acquaintances. The narrator marvels at how the saloon draws important men together. Drouet, for one, longs “to shine among his betters.”
The saloon is an important place for men to find connections and raise their socioeconomic status. It is full of people who, unlike Carrie, understand how finding employment and wealth works in the city. The saloon is essentially the place that Carrie imagined the city itself to be—a place where one can find opportunities to better oneself.
Themes
Literary Devices
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The narrator explains that the vices of the city do not rise from places like the saloon, per se, but rather from within the individual’s mind. The narrator likens the saloon to an “insect-infested” flower that draws more insects to it with its pleasurable scent.
Although the saloon is a place of opportunity, it is also the place that attracts and encourages immorality. In and of itself, the saloon is a neutral place where people can satisfy their ambitions, but given the natural human tendency towards greed, it becomes a place that cultivates vice.
Themes
Hurstwood briefly points out a “spiritualist,” Jules Wallace, in attendance before telling Drouet he has something to show him at midnight. Before leaving for a show, Drouet briefly tells Hurstwood about Carrie, whom he describes as “a little peach” and “a little dandy” whom he must call on. Hurstwood seems indifferent. The narrator states that this conversation will lead Carrie’s fate to unfold.
Hurstwood appears to be familiar with all the notable people about town and, consequently, is a valuable connection for Drouet. Although Hurstwood likes Drouet, he does not appear to be as much of a dandy, as he takes little interest in Drouet’s story about Carrie. Despite the lack of interest, it appears that these two men will take important roles in Carrie’s life.
Themes
Literary Devices
