y aspired to the milieu of Sondra Finchley that he would extend himself as far as murdering Roberta Alden, thus dissociating himself from his lower-class roots and thereby emulating and affiliating with the object of desire, Sondra. The inference is that social psychology impels actions that expose social realities and further point in the direction of social criticism. According to Eby, An American Tragedy offers a "macroeconomic view of pecuniary emulation and invidious comparison" (192). The reference to macroeconomics is really a reference to the whole American social scene; Sister Carrie, to which Eby compares An American Tragedy, says, is a more personal story. Thus what An American Tragedy is about are social class and individual psychology that is a function of unequal class structures. That is, Clyde Griffiths compares himself to the class that he aspires to. In the process, he is also obliged to compare his situation, as poor relation, to that of the Griffiths of Clyde's extended family, who have risen on the social scale, although not at all to the level of the Finchleys. Clyde's focus on breaking entirely out of his social trap, beyond the Lycurgus Griffiths and into Sondra Finchley's class results in what Eby says is Dreiser's emphasis on "the social manufacture of desires and, consequently, how the 'America' of the title constructs Clyde's self" (192). These desires entail preoccupation with material goods and with the social power that their acquisition implies. For example, says Eby, Clyde "is no one without fancy clothes" (194), and Eby connects this aspect of Clyde to Veblen's discussion of a socially felt need among both the "relatively poor" and the "relatively rich" to impress "transient observers" of the truly leisured class whose attention can have the effect of validating one's life. But Eby says that An American Tragedy does not confine itself to examining the individual psychology of Clyde. Rather, Clyde's psyc...