Particularly old Butler. The years pass and he must be killed and put
away, but not many readers of the book, I take it, will soon forget
him. Dreiser is at his best, indeed, when he deals with old men. In
their tragic helplessness they stand as symbols of that unfathomable
cosmic cruelty which he sees as the motive power of life itself. More,
even, than his women, he makes them poignant, vivid, memorable. The
picture of old Gerhardt is full of a subtle brightness, though he is
always in the background, as cautious and penny-wise as an ancient crow,
trotting to his Lutheran church, pathetically ill-used by the world he
never understands. Butler is another such, different in externals, but
at bottom the same dismayed, questioning, pathetic old man....
In "The Titan" there is a tightening of the screws, a clarifying of the
action, an infinite improvement in the manner. The book, in truth, has
the air of a new and clearer thinking out of "The Financier," as "Jennie
Gerhardt" is a new thinking out of "Sister Carrie." With almost the same
materials, the thing is given a new harmony and unity, a new
plausibility, a new passion and purpose.
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