Abstract
Theodore Dreiser is an American novelist who wrote Sister Carrie（1900） and An American Tragedy（1925）. It is not well-known that he also produced such dramas as Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural（1916） and The Hand of the Potter（1918）. The former contains seven one-act plays, including “The Girl in the Coffin”, whose hero is a workingman named Magnet. This drama focuses on Magnet’s conflict between his personal grief over his daughter’s disgraceful death and his public duty to lead a strike. This paper attempts to evaluate “The Girl in the Coffin”, considering Mary’s disgraceful death as well as Magnet’s conflict.
