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Teachers & SchoolsMorality and Ethics
Characters in Sister Carrie are often thrown into situations and predicaments that put their sense of right and wrong straight to the test. Should Carrie leave Drouet for Hurstwood? Should Hurstwood take the money and run? There are also questions we as readers grapple with related to issues of morality and ethics. We might wonder whether Carrie has any ethical responsibility to help Hurstwood after she leaves him at the end of the novel, or we might consider who bears responsibility for the suffering of the masses of poverty-stricken people depicted in the closing chapters of the novel. One thing is certain: Sister Carrie gets the wheels of our brains turning on the subject of morality and ethics.
Humans in Sister Carrie aren't capable of acting morally or ethically; they're only animals after all.
Sister Carrie shows how an unjust society makes it impossible for individuals to act morally or ethically.