The structure of An American Tragedy involves circular or repetitive scenes and images that drive home the trapped quality of Clyde Griffiths' life. There is no escape from the type of fate to which someone like him, with his background, and his experiences, is likely to be condemned. There are several types of repetitions in the novel. The first is the echo of previous scenes or events that recur when Clyde, sometimes consciously, refers to things he has seen or heard, in making decisions. In the early scene at the monthly dinner at Frissell's restaurant, for example, Hegglund regales the group with the story of the man who cleverly booked a suite for himself and his 'wife' and then, announcing that his wife had to return home, had his trunk moved into a smaller room. But the trunk is hers, not his, and "den he beats it, see, and leaves her and de trunk in de room" (58). The bellhops are universally impressed by this trick and full of retrospective suspicion of the man. Ratterer gives a very detailed description of him--from his clothing and accent down to the way he walked. The man was, Ratterer claims, pretending to be English in order to impress the hotel staff and, perhaps, the girl. The echo of this story comes back when Clyde leaves Roberta's bags in the hotel and tries to move on to his second reservation. This echo of a story that is several years old reveals the way Clyde thinks. Whether or not he remembers such things consciously he draws on the Green-Davidson days as the principal school of his youth. But, typically for Clyde, his sense of self-preservation is so weak that he fails to recall as well how the man pretending to a station above his own made a strong retrospective impression on those who had seen him.
Other types of repetition involve Clyde's motivations and actions. His whole approach to his dealings with women runs through a cycle twice. He rejects the idea of prostitutes in favor of Hortense...