In "The Financier" the artistic
voluptuary is almost completely overshadowed by the dollar-chaser; in
"The Titan" we begin to see clearly that grand battle between artist and
man of money, idealist and materialist, spirit and flesh, which is the
informing theme of the whole trilogy. The conflict that makes the drama,
once chiefly external, now becomes more and more internal; it is played
out within the soul of the man himself. The result is a character sketch
of the highest colour and brilliance, a superb portrait of a complex and
extremely fascinating man. Of all the personages in the Dreiser books,
the Cowperwood of "The Titan" is perhaps the most radiantly real. He is
accounted for in every detail, and yet, in the end, he is not accounted
for at all; there hangs about him, to the last, that baffling
mysteriousness which hangs about those we know most intimately. There is
in him a complete and indubitable masculinity, as the eternal feminine
is in Jennie. His struggle with the inexorable forces that urge him on
as with whips, and lure him with false lights, and bring him to
disillusion and dismay, is as typical as hers is, and as tragic.
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