Main Street Essays (2781 words) - Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

Main Street Main Street Sinclair Lewis was a queer boy, always an outsider, lonely. Once he had become famous, he began to promulgate an official view of his youth that represents perhaps an adult wish for a inoffensive life that never was. He was Sinclair Lewis (Hutchisson 8). In the years from 1914 to 1951 Sinclair Lewis, a flamboyant, driven, self-devouring genius from Sauk Centre, Minnesota, aspired in twenty two novels to make all America his province. (Hutchisson 9). Although his star has now waned, he was in his time the best-known and the most controversial of all writers and through a number of books remarkable for their satiric bite and for their ambivalent love and hatred of the land and the people he took as his domain, he helped to make Americans known to themselves and to the world. Lewis was a descendant of the line of Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and Twain (Mencken 17). Like them, he railed against the insidious effects of mass culture and the standardization of manners and ideas. Lewis dreamed of a better America and in his best novels he turned the light of his critical gaze upon our most hallowed institutions including the small town. He became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his works on American life (Mencken 19). Many of Lewis's books had relevance to his life growing up. He grew up in a small town with all the small town qualities and wrote mostly satirically about them. One of many books that satirize small towns is Main Street. In this novel, many themes are presented such as the use of satire as an urge to reform, family life of the period as portrayed in the novel, and World War I and its impact on the main streets of America. During the period Lewis wrote the novel, World War I sparked in Europe. During this time the United States was pushed into the war and many soldiers were needed and drafted by the United States military. This time affected many young boys and many families. It also brought on a new feeling of nationalism and patriotism not only in the big cities, but also in the small towns. Some of these characteristics were satirized by Sinclair Lewis in this book. Much of what goes on during Sinclair Lewis's life goes into his books including his marriages, important dates, and early life. Small towns grew numerous across the country because during this period many immigrants traveled west. Small towns are much different than big cities because they have different values, goals, and morals. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis satirizes the small town lives and values of Americans through the idealistic view of Carl Kennicott. Carol Kennicott's view of Gopher Prairie, the small town, is skewed because of her past and her biased way of looking at it. Much has been written and said about Carol. She is Lewis himself in feminine guise, as he admitted in 1922: ?... [She is] always groping for something she isn't capable of obtaining, always dissatisfied...intolerants of her surroundings, yet lacking any clearly defined vision of what she wants to do or be? (Schorer 273). Carol Kennicott is more advanced and intellectual than any of the people in the town. She graduates from Blodgett College, a religious institution, which protects its students ?from the wickedness of the universities? and censors them from whatever they do not want them to learn (2). Carol's first meeting with the townspeople is a different experience for her. Because of her intelligence and sophistication, she brings up topics such as labor unions and profit-sharing (42). The townspeople react differently as one of the conversationalist says, ?All this profit sharing and welfare work and insurance and old-age pension is simply poppycock? (43). She is interested in sociology and wishes to participate in village improvement. (3). ?She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous? (2). This quote demostrates how Carol is put into a bad situation because of her surroundings and how she has to change the town if she wants to be fulfilled mentally. Furthermore, Carol also wants change and she wants to be the one who makes it in Gopher Prairie where she lives. She goes there and wants to make it pretty and modern without knowing much about it herself (Dooley 63). She