How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The plea was that of a gaunt-faced man of about thirty, who looked the picture of privation and wretchedness. Drouet was the first to see. He handed over a dime with an upwelling feeling of pity in his heart. Hurstwood scarcely noticed the incident. Carrie quickly forgot. (14.96)
We've been repeatedly told by the narrator that Carrie has such a sensitive nature. So why is Drouet the only one who bothers to give this poor guy the time of day?
Quote #2
On the street sometimes [Carrie] would see men working—Irishmen with picks, coal-heavers with great loads to shovel, Americans busy about some work which was a mere matter of strength—and they touched her fancy. Toil, now that she was free of it, seemed even a more desolate thing than when she was part of it. She saw it through a mist of fancy—a pale, somber half-light, which was the essence of poetic feeling […] Her sympathies were ever with that under-world of toil from which she had so recently sprung, and which she best understood. (15.48)
Seeing the exploited workers "through a mist of fancy" that was "the essence of poetic feeing" seems a little weird, doesn't it? It's almost like Carrie's happily kicking back with a bag of popcorn and watching the workers in some sentimental movie. This in and of itself puts her in a strange position vis-à-vis the workers—she seems way more into watching them sweat than actually doing something to help them.
Quote #3
[Carrie's] need of clothes—to say nothing of her desire for ornaments—grew rapidly as the fact developed that for all her work she was not to have them. The sympathy she felt for Hurstwood, at the time he asked her to tide him over, vanished with these newer urgings of decency. (39.2)
Ah, once again Carrie's lust for stuff seems to get in the way of her relationships to others. Here, specifically, it impedes her ability to sustain her compassion in any meaningful way, as her sympathy for Hurstwood vanishes at the prospect of rocking a new outfit. This is perhaps yet another reason she ends up alone at the end of the novel.
Quote #4
[Hurstwood] seemed in a way to resent [Carrie's] kindly inquiries—so much better had fate dealt with her. (46.92)
Bitter much, Hurstwood? What gets in the way of characters's willingness to receive compassion from others?
Quote #5
[Carrie] knew that out in Chicago this very day the same factory chamber was full of poor homely-clad girls working in long lines at clattering machines; that at noon they would eat a miserable lunch in a half-hour; that Saturday they would gather, as they had when she was one of them, and accept the small pay for work a hundred times harder than she was now doing. Oh, it was so easy now! (44.91)
This looks a little like compassion at first, but we've got to wonder if Carrie is drawing on this memory just to make her victory seem all the sweeter.
Quote #6
He strolled about sizing up people, but it was long before just the right face and situation arrived. When he asked, he was refused. Shocked by this result, he took an hour to recover and then asked again. This time a nickel was given him. By the most watchful effort he did get twenty cents more, but it was painful. (45.71)
This description of Hurstwood begging for change sure does belie the notion that panhandling is easy money. It's probably safe to assume that the "right face" Hurstwood kept an eye out for was a compassionate-looking one rather than one that resembles Darth Vader's. Is it a lack of compassion or something else that stops these passersby from helping him?
Quote #7
Individual after individual passed [Hurstwood], nearly all well dressed, almost all indifferent. (45.81)
What explains this indifference? And why does the narrator point out how well dressed the people who are indifferent to his requests for help are? What would wearing an Armani suit have to do with their reaction to him?
Quote #8
They looked at [the door] as dumb brutes look, as dogs paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered, now a curse, now a comment. (47.108)
Okay, so this depiction of homeless people is sad, for sure. But likening them to animals here risks dehumanizing them in a way that could make it less easy for readers to relate to them, and thus possibly less likely to feel a strong sense of compassion for them.
Quote #9
"Oh, dear," said Carrie, with whom the sufferings of Father Goriot were still keen. "That's all you think of. Aren't you sorry for the people who haven't anything tonight?" (47.61)
At the suggestion of the cultured Ames, Carrie has just been reading a novel that has primed her to scold Lola for her lack of compassion. Like other moments in the novel, this one suggests that reading literature, watching plays, and listening to music can help characters become more compassionate. But (and this is a big but), we rarely see those compassionate feelings translated into compassionate acts, which makes us wonder whether Sister Carrie is issuing a critique of those cultural activities or questioning their value.
Quote #10
[…] she began to think of the anomaly of her finding work in several weeks and his lounging in idleness for a number of months. "Why don't he get something?" she openly said to herself. "If I can he surely ought to. It wasn't very hard for me." (38.55-56)
Um, Carrie seems to have a very short memory. In fact, we readers know full well just how hard it was for Carrie to find work at several different points in the novel. What's up with her sudden amnesia?