Upton Sinclair Lewis Babbitt

Born and raised in a tiny Minnesota prairie town, few would have guessed that young and down-to-earth Sinclair Lewis would become one of America’s most celebrated authors and outspoken liberal thinkers. Lewis didn’t discover this exact destiny until his 20s, but from his early teens, Lewis could tell that the prairie village of his birth would be far too limiting for his future. In 1902, he travelled east to attend Oberlin Academy (Oberlin College’s preparatory high school), but it was on the grounds of Yale University, however, where Lewis truly discovered his genius for literature. In the heat of the Progressive Era, Lewis also developed a streak of idealism fueled by his work at both Upton Sinclair’s commune in New Jersey and the Carmel-by-the-Sea …show more content…
Each novel addresses this concept in its own unique and individual manner, and focuses on a different aspect of American society that Lewis took issue with. His 1920 novel Main Street and 1922 novel Babbitt both critique the insularity and small-mindedness that could be found everywhere in America from the small towns like Gopher Prairie to the larger metropolises like Zenith. Both of these settings act as archetypes for the two sides of America that they represent, with Carol conjecturing in Main Street that there are probably thousands of copies of towns just like Gopher Prairie, and “if [someone] were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away, he would not realize it” and Babbitt proudly remarking that Zenith “could not have [been distinguished] from a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or Manitoba”. (Main Street, 402), (Babbitt, 67) As characters however, Carol and Babbitt represent the polar opposites of the society as a whole Lewis looks to portray. Carol is the rebellious liberal hero of the novel who finds the sameness and conformity of “Main Street” and its people insufferable, stifling and “too small to absorb her", whereas Babbitt is the exact representation of the type of person she is fighting against, who as “a Republican, a Presbyterian, an Elk, [and] a real-estate broker” was the ultimate sustainer of this socially forced and unquestioned loyalty to conformity and uniformity. (Main Street, 53), (Babbitt, 37) These aspects of his novels parallel Lewis’ worldview in which Gopher Prairie and Main Street act as microcosms for the nation and its people as a whole. Carol represents the class of liberal idealists struggling against the ignorance of the uneducated masses, represented by Babbitt.