The novel traces two parallel trajectories: Carrie ascending steadily toward wealth and fame, while Hurstwood descends equally steadily into unemployment, poverty, and the slow erasure of who he once was.
2Reading· 오늘의 본문
We · Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
Carrie stood in her luxurious apartment, gazing at the glittering city below. She had everything she once dreamed of: fine clothes, admirers, a life on the stage. Yet, a profound emptiness echoed within her. The applause faded, the crowds dispersed, and she was left alone with the ghost of her own desires. Her rise from a simple country girl to a celebrated actress was complete, but the destination felt hollow. The more she acquired—the fame, the comfort, the attention—the less it seemed to satisfy the restless yearning that had propelled her forward. Success, she realized, was not a summit but a mirror, reflecting only the next, elusive thing she did not have.
B2 · 128 wordsavg 25.6 w/s
Dreiser masterfully exposes the hollowness at the core of Carrie's ascent, framing her material and social gains as a pyrrhic victory. Her trajectory, while upward, is propelled by an insatiable desire that renders each achievement provisional and ultimately unsatisfying. The novel suggests that her success is not a fulfillment but a displacement; as she climbs, she sheds her past selves, leaving her spiritually adrift in a world of surfaces. The glitter of the stage and the comfort of wealth become gilded cages, isolating her from genuine connection and highlighting the existential void that material ambition cannot fill. Her story culminates not in triumph, but in a poignant realization of desire's end—the moment when one possesses everything one sought, only to find the seeking itself was the sole, fleeting substance. What makes Sister Carrie endure as a work of literature is precisely this refusal to offer easy consolation — it demands that readers sit with the discomfort of a world that does not resolve neatly, and find their own position within it.
C1 · 170 wordsavg 34.0 w/s
3Vocabulary· 핵심 어휘 & 연습
traces
추적하다, 따라가다
The novel traces the parallel lives of two characters from the same town.
parallel
평행의, 유사한
Their careers followed parallel trajectories for many years.
ascending
오르는, 상승하는
She watched the plane ascending steadily into the clouds.
descends
내려가다, 쇠퇴하다
As night falls, a deep silence descends upon the forest.
erasure
지움, 말소
The slow erasure of his identity was the tragedy of his later years.
Activity 1 · 빈칸 채우기5 questions
1. Every hour of D-503's life was carefully ____ by the Table of Hours.
2. The ____ of privacy did not exist in the One State.
3. Individual names were ____ and replaced with numbers.
4. The glass walls guaranteed there was no ____ for citizens.
5. The State was ____ declared to represent perfect happiness.