Dissatisfied with life in her rural Wisconsin home, 18-year-old Caroline "Sister Carrie" Meeber takes the train to Chicago, where her older sister and her husband have agreed to take her in. Carrie soon embarks on a quest for work to pay rent to her sister and her husband, and takes a job running a machine in a shoe factory. Opportunities in the big city make her realize her own American Dream, first as a mistress to men that she perceives as superior, and later becoming a famous actress.

Ambitious, but ill-educated, naïve, and immature, Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with prostitutes. Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with manipulative Hortense Briggs, who takes advantage of him. After being in a car accident in which a young girl loses her life, Clyde...