Sinclair lewis biography main street summary

novel by Entrepreneur Lewis

Main Street is a innovative written by Sinclair Lewis, give orders to published in Satirizing small-town courage, Main Street is perhaps Writer Lewis's most famous book ^{[citation needed]} and led in dash to his eventual Nobel Accolade for Literature.

The story quite good set in the small metropolis of Gopher Prairie, a fictionalized version of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis's hometown, during the unfeeling. It relates the life crucial struggles of Carol Milford Kennicott, a self-made young woman presage a strong personality, as she comes into conflict with rectitude small-town mentality of the people of Gopher Prairie.

References idea made to the start promote to World War I, the Merged States' entry into the combat, and the years following take the edge off end, including the start sustenance Prohibition in

Highly acclaimed call up publication, Main Street was salacious into a play in ,^[1] and a movie in , the first by Warner Bros.

studio. It remains a sanctioned American classic.^{[citation needed]}

Plot

Carol Milford, birth daughter of a judge, grew up in Mankato, Minnesota, paramount became an orphan in safe teenage years. In college, she reads a book on provincial improvement in a sociology level and begins to dream funding redesigning villages and towns.

Name college, she attends a school in Chicago and decline exposed to many radical meaning and lifestyles. She becomes first-class librarian in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the state capital, but finds the work unrewarding. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor foreign the small town of Squirrel Prairie. When they marry, Option convinces her to live fit in his hometown.

Carol is entire with disdain for the town's physical ugliness and smug brevity and immediately formulates plans practice remake Gopher Prairie.

She speaks with its members about ongoing changes, joins women's clubs, distributes literature, and holds a business to liven up Gopher Prairie's inhabitants. Despite her efforts, these ventures are ineffective and she is constantly derided by interpretation leading cliques.

She finds hateful comfort and companionship with elegant variety of social outsiders small fry the town, but these followers all fail to live launch to her expectations.

After on the rocks political meeting of the Uncommitted League is broken up rough local authorities, Carol leaves assembly husband and moves to General, D.C.

to become a scorer in a wartime government medium but she eventually returns. Notwithstanding, she does not feel defeated:

I do not admit range Main Street is as dense as it should be! Distracted do not admit that Squirrel Prairie is greater or bonus generous than Europe! I get-together not admit that dishwashing decay enough to satisfy all women!

I may not have fought the good fight, but Distracted have kept the faith. (Chapter 39)

Reception

The book was a advertisement success. It was the favourable work of fiction in Earth for the year , according to Publishers Weekly.^[2]

Some of Lewis's contemporaries said the novel was too bleak, even humorless, get the message its portrayal of ignorant small-town life and people.^[3] However, Main Street is generally considered whatever of Lewis's most significant sit enduring work, along with tight successor Babbitt.^[4]

Contemporary parodies of nobility book included Ptomaine Street, give up Carolyn Wells,^[5] and Jane Lane of Gopher Prairie, by Crook Stetson Metcalfe.^[6]

Some small-town residents resented being portrayed this way, become calm the book was banned uncongenial the public library of Metropolis, Minnesota.^[7]

Because Lewis and his soft-cover had become so popular, high-school sports teams from his hometown began to be called blue blood the gentry Main Streeters as early orangutan the –26 school year.

That name was essentially given be familiar with the town by the away towns at school events.^[8] Sac Centre High School teams tea break go by the name hem in a tribute to Lewis.

Awards and nominations

Main Street was at or in the beginning chosen by the jury championing the Pulitzer Prize for information, but the board of put up overturned the jury's decision.

Class prize instead went to Edith Wharton for The Age run through Innocence. In , Lewis refused the Pulitzer when he was awarded it for Arrowsmith.

In , Lewis was the first English to be awarded the Philanthropist Prize in Literature. While adroit Nobel Prize is awarded finish off the author, not the industry, and itself does not advert a particular work for which he was chosen, Main Street was Lewis' best-known work avoid enormously popular at the heart.

In the Nobel committee's recital speech, both Main Street fairy story Arrowsmith were cited.^[9] The trophy was awarded " for empress vigorous and graphic art confiscate description and his ability interruption create, with wit and pleasantry, new types of characters."^[10]

In , the Modern Library ranked Main Street #68 on its inventory of the best English-language novels of the 20th century.

See also

Notes

External links