All 50 Uses

compel
in
An American Tragedy
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During all this time Clyde was saying to himself that he did not wish to do this any more, that he and his parents looked foolish and less than normal—"cheap" was the word he would have used if he could have brought himself to express his full measure of resentment at being compelled to participate in this way—and that he would not do it any more if he could help.†
Chpt 1

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
And Clyde, instead of leading her in wit and defiance and matching her experiences with his own, was compelled to content himself with approving of her.†
Chpt 1
And seeing this, she put him off, at times evaded him, compelled him to content himself with little more than the crumbs of her company, while at the same time favoring him with descriptions or pictures of other activities and contacts which made him feel as though he could no longer endure to merely trail her in this fashion.†
Chpt 1
And in part this was true, only so changed was Clyde's manner of late, that his mother had been compelled to take a very different attitude toward him and was beginning to be not a little dubious as to her further control over him.†
Chpt 1
Almost instantly his mind proceeded to join this coincidence with the time he had seen her descending the steps of the rooming house in Montrose Street, together with the business of the letter he had found her reading, and the money she had been compelled to raise—the hundred dollars.†
Chpt 1
Its chief mental content appeared to be one of opposition to being compelled by him to do anything.†
Chpt 1
At the same time, as she also explained, now she was compelled to come to him for aid in connection with it.†
Chpt 1
At the finish, as he found, Lucille Nickolas was lying across his knees face down in such a spanking position that he was compelled to laugh.†
Chpt 1
For, as it turned out, Dillard was compelled to return to Fonda for some reason and could not fulfill the Sunday understanding.†
Chpt 2
And the sight of Clyde here, looking so much like Gilbert and in an armless shirt and trousers working among these men, tended to impress upon him more sharply than at any time before the fact that Clyde was his nephew, and that he ought not to be compelled to continue at this very menial form of work any longer.†
Chpt 2
So it was that although throughout her infancy and girlhood she was compelled to hear of and share a depriving and toilsome poverty, still, because of her innate imagination, she was always thinking of something better.†
Chpt 2
From that point on until evening, when she was compelled to take the seven o'clock train, they were unspeakably happy together, loitering near the little city comparatively strange to both.†
Chpt 2
To salve her own conscience more than anything else, she at once wrote her mother and her sister a very plausible version of why she had been compelled to leave the Newtons.†
Chpt 2
Also his having been compelled to give up Rita,—yet to no end.†
Chpt 2
For, although the present conditions and situation were different, and he had no moral authority wherewith to charge Roberta with any such unfair treatment as Hortense had meted out to him, still there was this other fact that girls—all of them—were obviously stubborn and self-preservative, always setting themselves apart from and even above the average man and so wishing to compel him to do a lot of things for them without their wishing to do anything in return.†
Chpt 2

compel = force; or (more rarely) convince
The daughter of parents who lived and worked on a farm and one who was compelled to work for her own living.†
Chpt 2

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
And with that Roberta had been compelled to agree.†
Chpt 2
Was he not properly invited by people of their own station here in Lycurgus whom most certainly they were compelled to respect?†
Chpt 2
As lacking as he was in some of the finer shades of mental discrimination, a sly and ironic pleasure lay in the thought that now Gilbert and the Griffiths might be compelled to countenance him whether they would or not—invite him to their home, even.†
Chpt 2
Unfortunately for this, she was compelled, to her dismay and terror, to enter the factory one morning, just about this time, her face a symbol of even graver and more terrifying doubts and fears than any that had hitherto assailed her.†
Chpt 2
Her manner as she said this was so obviously dejected and self-commiserating that at once he was compelled to dismiss the thought of intrigue.†
Chpt 2
And since it was not anything he could do at the office, he was compelled to return to his room and make it out there—a bit of energetic and ambitious commercialism, as the Starks saw it, worthy of their admiration and sympathy.†
Chpt 2
He was compelled to admit to himself that she had probably thought his intentions were more serious or she would not have submitted to him at all.†
Chpt 2
And how was she to compel him, in the face of his own fears and dangers, to jeopardize his position here?†
Chpt 2

compel = force; or (more rarely) convince
For since he did not appear to care for her any more and plainly desired to be rid of her, she was in no mood to compel him to do other than he wished.†
Chpt 2
Thus, for instance, an associate foreman, chancing to reminisce one day concerning a certain girl in his department who had "gotten in trouble" and had been compelled to leave, he had been given the opportunity to inquire what he thought such a girl did in case she could not afford or did not want to have a child.†
Chpt 2

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
After all, wouldn't all of these society people in whom he was so much interested feel that whatever his relationship to them, she would be justified in taking the course which she might be compelled to take?†
Chpt 2
And unless he did so now she might think it would be fair and legitimate enough for her to compel him to do so.†
Chpt 2

compel = force; or (more rarely) convince
For in several conferences following that in which she had indicated that she expected him to marry her, he had reiterated, if vaguely, a veiled threat that in case she appealed to his uncle he would not be compelled to marry her, after all, for he could go elsewhere.†
Chpt 2

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
The way he put it was that unless left undisturbed in his present situation he would be in no position to marry her and furthermore could not possibly do anything to aid her at the coming time when most of all she would stand in need of aid—a hint which caused Roberta to reflect on a hitherto not fully developed vein of hardness in Clyde, although had she but sufficiently reflected, it had shown itself at the time that he compelled her to admit him to her room.†
Chpt 2
Besides he was foolish enough to hope, if not exactly believe, that by once more conducting himself as though he still entertained a lively sense of the problem that afflicted her and that he was willing, in case no other way was found, to eventually marry her (though he could never definitely be persuaded to commit himself as to this), he could reduce her determination to compel him to act soon at least to a minimum, and so leave him more time in which to exhaust every possibility of escape without marriage, and without being compelled to run away.†
Chpt 2

compel = force; or (more rarely) convince
Besides he was foolish enough to hope, if not exactly believe, that by once more conducting himself as though he still entertained a lively sense of the problem that afflicted her and that he was willing, in case no other way was found, to eventually marry her (though he could never definitely be persuaded to commit himself as to this), he could reduce her determination to compel him to act soon at least to a minimum, and so leave him more time in which to exhaust every possibility of escape without marriage, and without being compelled to run away.†
Chpt 2

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
For at the proper time, and unless between then and now, something—her own subtle attack if not her at present feverish interest in Clyde—should have worked to alter her mother's viewpoint in regard to him—she might be compelled to take some steps of her own in order to frustrate her mother.†
Chpt 2
And to Roberta, who by now was reduced to the verge of distraction between Clyde's delay and her determination to compel him to act in her behalf, she appeared to be little less than an epitome of all the security, luxury and freedom from responsibility which so enticed and hence caused Clyde to delay and be as indifferent as possible to the dire state which confronted her.†
Chpt 2

compel = force; or (more rarely) convince
For motoring north the following Sunday to Arrow Lake to the lodge of the Trumbulls' to take advantage of an early spring week-end planned by Sondra, the party on nearing Biltz, which was in the direct line of the trip, was compelled to detour east in the direction of Roberta's home.†
Chpt 2

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
The misery of once more drifting about here and there; of being compelled to write his mother once more concerning certain things about his flight, which some one writing from here might explain to her afterwards—and so much more damagingly.†
Chpt 2
Running away from one situation and another just to start all over somewhere else—perhaps only to be compelled to flee from something worse.†
Chpt 2
But in so far as he was concerned, and since he had really no definite or workable idea, it seemed important to him that only silence, silence was the great and all essential thing now, so that, even under the impending edge of the knife of disaster, he might be able to think more, and more, and more, without being compelled to do anything, and without momentarily being tortured by the thought that Roberta, in some nervous or moody or frantic state, would say or do something which, assuming that he should hit upon some helpful thought or plan in connection with Sondra, would prevent him from executing it.†
Chpt 2
That girl's body—as some peculiar force in his own brain now still compelled him to think—being found, but the man's not.†
Chpt 2
And Esta had not compelled any one to marry her.†
Chpt 2
Then again his more cowering sense of what society would think and do, if it knew, what he himself would be compelled to think of himself afterwards, fairly well satisfied him that as much as he desired to stay, he was not the one to do anything at all and in consequence must flee.†
Chpt 2
I regret to be compelled to take this step, but you have allowed all this time to go in silence really, and Saturday is the third, and without any plans of any kind.†
Chpt 2
And why, anyhow, and except for her crass determination to force him in this way, should he be compelled to track here and there with her—every hour—every minute of which was torture—an unending mental crucifixion really, when, if he were but rid of her!†
Chpt 2
But on top of that, being compelled "for the register's sake," as Boniface phrased it, to sign Clifford Golden and wife—before he could take his bag again.†
Chpt 2
But Mrs. Peyton appearing and announcing that Clyde lived there but that at present he was absent (having gone the Tuesday before to visit friends at Twelfth Lake, she believed), he was rather painfully compelled to announce, first, that he was the district attorney of Cataraqui County, and, next, that because of certain suspicious circumstances in connection with the drowning of a girl in Big Bittern, with whom they had reason to believe that Clyde was at the time, they would now be compelled to have access to his room, a statement which so astonished Mrs. Peyton that she fell back, an expression of mixed amazement, horror, and unbelief overspreading her features.†
Chpt 3
But Mrs. Peyton appearing and announcing that Clyde lived there but that at present he was absent (having gone the Tuesday before to visit friends at Twelfth Lake, she believed), he was rather painfully compelled to announce, first, that he was the district attorney of Cataraqui County, and, next, that because of certain suspicious circumstances in connection with the drowning of a girl in Big Bittern, with whom they had reason to believe that Clyde was at the time, they would now be compelled to have access to his room, a statement which so astonished Mrs. Peyton that she fell back, an expression of mixed amazement, horror, and unbelief overspreading her features.†
Chpt 3
I am sorry, Madam, but I am compelled to ask you to show us his room.
Chpt 3 *

compelled = forced
And as for that toilet set in its original case, with the label "Whitely-Lycurgus" on it, while it was true that he had been compelled to leave that, still might not any one—Mrs.†
Chpt 3

compelled = forced; or (more rarely) convinced
And while he should be blissfully happy with Sondra, still here were all of those dreadful things of which now all of the time he would be compelled to think.†
Chpt 3
FROM Friday morning until the following Tuesday noon, moving amid such scenes as previously had so exhilarated and enthralled him, Clyde was now compelled to suffer the most frightful fears and dreads.†
Chpt 3

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Highlighting 2 Senses of the Word

Definitions:

(1) (compel)
to force someone to do something

or more rarely:

to convince someone to do something

Most typically, compel describes an external influence forcing someone to do something, but it can also describe being driven by an internal desire.
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)

compel in An American Tragedy (Auto-generated)

compel
in
An American Tragedy
(Auto-generated)