Sinclair Lewis and Society
A rebel in literature “is one who feels discontented with personal and social life and repudiates the scale of values of his neighbours, his country and his time”. (5) Lewis was a typical rebel. He was possessed by a certain measure of sensitivity, given expression to his heart’s tumult. Equipped intellectually, he could understand with ease, the currents and eddies of the life around him. He combined belief with passion, striving to build up a public opinion by disturbing the conventional pattern of thinking in its place, a juster and a more rational body of opinion was created. He cajoled and ridiculed his fellowmen into losing their hold on traditional views. Thus the work of the rebel in literature was to continue his process. An increasing awareness of social evils was witnessed by the modern times. Sinclair Lewis in “Babbitt”, “Arrow Smith”, “Elmer Gantry” and “The Man Who Knew Coolidge”, for instance, had lashed out against hypocrisy and provincialism. Through “Main Street”, he had exposed the small town life, which was dull and insipid. The men had no lively talk to save their lives from being a drudgery. The talk was about money, crops and the price trends. They gave vent to their prejudices against the hired labourers of Scandinavia and of German peasants. Every attempt to reform the town and its life by people like Carol were not only thwarted, but they were also driven into exile. It was to his “Village Virus” that cultured people like Guy Pollock, the village lawyer, had become an easy prey. Active women like Carol Kannicott were driven into conformity and an inglorious retreat into a small-town life of cowardice and a life without conviction.
The talk was about the beauties of the modern filing system. It enabled a man to find out a letter instantly. In a practical way, it would not say anything about the physical appearance of modern up-to-date filing cabinets. He would compare the beauty of it to a poet’s song as the flush on a maiden’s cheek when she heard the first whispered words of love or sharp chirp of the mother bird at eventide to its birdlings.
It was not the sales talk between men but a mere burlesque of such a talk. It was made up of verbosity, exaggeration, incongruity and contradiction. They would all lead to a sense of absurdity. The apparel of it all lay in an ironical treatment of ideas. The gap between the actual and the expressed standards would make it appear grotesque. The speech of this man was at once contradictory. In a talk about the prohibition law in the country, through the XVIII Amendment to the Constitution, Lowell would make a ridiculous suggestion of levity in implementation. Drawing attention to a fault in another man, he, in the same breath, emphasizes his own ability on the same score. In some, he condemned the wanderlust. He would condemn the abuse of Queen’s English at the hands of the younger generation. Through a comparison between two given statements, the contradiction was made more obvious. The satiric monologue revealed what the speaker had liked to hide. Through an analysis of a typical talk, Lewis tried to make an analysis of a social class. His mind had served as a reverberatory apparatus for the advertising slogans and typical propaganda. These served as a substitute for the cultural expressions of that society. It was also a typical tall talk, speaking about their country in glowing terms. He called their nation greater than all the nations put together, with its largest number of automobiles, radios, furnaces, suits of clothes, miles of cement walks and skyscrapers. Their materials and machines would substitute their Gods.
He states through the Vacuum cleaners, America had given the world one mystery, which was unique to the country and which would outline the columns of Acropolis. The sixth Babbilogue was about the basic and fundamental ideas of Christian American Citizenship. How effectively did Lewis portray the manners! The man of the times, could as well be seen from the one particular passage of the novel.
Through his "Dodsworth" (1929), Lewis was able to picturize the American expatriates and their lives. His culturists like Frances Dodsworth, the British friend in England and in Europe, the effete butterflies of culture, Endicott, Namde Azeredo and Edith Cortright, were all portrayed and analyzed to give such as sustained picture of the art-world, before which Samuel Dodsworth was a sensitive student.
In his former life, he was a motor car manufacturer who had worked his way up in the life through unstinted hard work, abandoning everything in the world to secure fame for himself. So after attaining this in his life, Dodsworth felt that his life was a waste. He was in quest of culture in this world.
In England, on the first leg of the long journey in quest of culture, the Dodsworths found this country to be treading the path of decadence in culture. Men and Women were habituated to lead a life of utter promiscuity. One such embarrassing situation had forced the Dodsworths to leave for Europe in utter dismay over the conditions in England.
In Europe too, Frances Dodsworth had fallen prey to the glitter and glamour of culture practiced in Europe. It was all fake and resulted in men trapping women. For people like Frances Dodsworth, it was all quite natural and she became the victim of this easy-going life. Entertaining women of good status and men, who were culture-fads, became the practice in Europe, while, for men like Dodsworth, it became really unbearable. He was forced to lead a lazy life. He was a perfect stranger to that effete life. It soon reached a breaking point when the two had a row over his unkind impressions of her dear friends. This soon led to an estrangement between them. Dodsworth begins his quest for a lady who would understand him rightly keeping their mother country high. He would finally fall into liking Edith Cortright before he decided to leave for America and its simplistic life. But even the business America was lost in its Mammon worship and dissipation among the younger generations.
Thus Dodsworth had to exercise his discretion in learning the lessons in culture, without losing his own self.
“Elmer Gantry” exposes through the lens of the hero, false religion and immortality among priests. The ceremony and taboo of religion were brought to a merciless exposure, especially, making a mockery of their marriages. Through “Arrow Smith”, Lewis had exposed the difficult role of a sincere research scientist up against the commercialism of the drug world.
In “The Man Who Knew Coolidge”, the talk of a typical Babbitt was called Babbilogue, Lowel Schmaltz, the hero was humorously satirized. It was the facile virtue of Sinclair Lewis to imitate the long satirical monologues even of the characters not yet created, in a fit accent. Women were exempted from this parody. The long-winded man’s voice in a smoking car, the Babbitts, the Gantrys and the Lowel Schmaltzes were all taken as models. As the speeches were satirized, it went to typify those of a class. The humor and the effect of a real talk of someone who was readily recognizable, are the two requisites of a successful Babbilogue. “It turned out to be a salesman’s talk of points of service and practicability. The effective and the decadent culture of the Old World was replaced by the New Era of American Civilization. There were no noble guidelines for the conduct of a person in society than reading widely, thinking scientifically, speaking briefly and selling the goods.” (6)
From the rubble of it all, one could see the ugly personality of a fellow. Schamtz was a failure and a fraud, both at home, as well as at business. As a husband, he was a sadistic monster. He misquoted Freud to his convenience. He was affiliated to the sinister anti-democratic forces in the name of social and political attitudes. It was this underworld which Lewis tried to expose in his novels. If the Germans were slow to align themselves to the democratic set up in America, they must be coerced into accepting it. He would proudly state how the Bolsheviks were manhandled till they abandoned their doctrines at the instance of the Americanization Committee of the Zenith of Commerce. The Huskies immigrating from their foreign homes had persisted with their ridiculous and uncivilized customs instead of undergoing a process of deculturization and becoming real Americans. Lowel Schmaltz’s sinister dualities had estranged him from public sympathy. He was an irredeemable Babbitt and one got nasty if he was naive and complacent. He was arrogant and assertive. Lewis was able to catch the culture-reflexes of certain types of people. The author was not always as patronizing and as superior to the average American as he was to the man in “The Man Who Knew Coolidge”. He had the “Mercury” readers in his mind. Lewis had only described these reflexes which those readers had been trained by Henry Mencken to recognize and condemn.
In “The Man Who Knew Coolidge”, the talk of a typical Babbitt was called Babbilogue, Lowel Schmaltz, the hero was humorously satirized. It was the facile virtue of Sinclair Lewis to imitate the long satirical monologues even of the characters not yet created, in a fit accent. Women were exempted from this parody. The long-winded man’s voice in a smoking car, the Babbitts, the Gantrys and the Lowel Schmaltzes were all taken as models. As the speeches were satirized, it went to typify those of a class. The humor and the effect of a real talk of someone who was readily recognizable, are the two requisites of a successful Babbilogue. “It turned out to be a salesman’s talk of points of service and practicability. The effective and the decadent culture of the Old World was replaced by the New Era of American Civilization. There were no noble guidelines for the conduct of a person in society than reading widely, thinking scientifically, speaking briefly and selling the goods.” (6)
From the rubble of it all, one could see the ugly personality of a fellow. Schamtz was a failure and a fraud, both at home, as well as at business. As a husband, he was a sadistic monster. He misquoted Freud to his convenience. He was affiliated to the sinister anti-democratic forces in the name of social and political attitudes. It was this underworld which Lewis tried to expose in his novels. If the Germans were slow to align themselves to the democratic set up in America, they must be coerced into accepting it. He would proudly state how the Bolsheviks were manhandled till they abandoned their doctrines at the instance of the Americanization Committee of the Zenith of Commerce. The Huskies immigrating from their foreign homes had persisted with their ridiculous and uncivilized customs instead of undergoing a process of deculturization and becoming real Americans. Lowel Schmaltz’s sinister dualities had estranged him from public sympathy. He was an irredeemable Babbitt and one got nasty if he was naive and complacent. He was arrogant and assertive. Lewis was able to catch the culture-reflexes of certain types of people. The author was not always as patronizing and as superior to the average American as he was to the man in “The Man Who Knew Coolidge”. He had the “Mercury” readers in his mind. Lewis had only described these reflexes which those readers had been trained by Henry Mencken to recognize and condemn.
It was not the sales talk between men but a mere burlesque of such a talk. It was made up of verbosity, exaggeration, incongruity and contradiction. They would all lead to a sense of absurdity. The apparel of it all lay in an ironical treatment of ideas. The gap between the actual and the expressed standards would make it appear grotesque. The speech of this man was at once contradictory. In a talk about the prohibition law in the country, through the XVIII Amendment to the Constitution, Lowell would make a ridiculous suggestion of levity in implementation. Drawing attention to a fault in another man, he, in the same breath, emphasizes his own ability on the same score. In some, he condemned the wanderlust. He would condemn the abuse of Queen’s English at the hands of the younger generation. Through a comparison between two given statements, the contradiction was made more obvious. The satiric monologue revealed what the speaker had liked to hide. Through an analysis of a typical talk, Lewis tried to make an analysis of a social class. His mind had served as a reverberatory apparatus for the advertising slogans and typical propaganda. These served as a substitute for the cultural expressions of that society. It was also a typical tall talk, speaking about their country in glowing terms. He called their nation greater than all the nations put together, with its largest number of automobiles, radios, furnaces, suits of clothes, miles of cement walks and skyscrapers. Their materials and machines would substitute their Gods.
He states through the Vacuum cleaners, America had given the world one mystery, which was unique to the country and which would outline the columns of Acropolis. The sixth Babbilogue was about the basic and fundamental ideas of Christian American Citizenship. How effectively did Lewis portray the manners! The man of the times, could as well be seen from the one particular passage of the novel.
Through his "Dodsworth" (1929), Lewis was able to picturize the American expatriates and their lives. His culturists like Frances Dodsworth, the British friend in England and in Europe, the effete butterflies of culture, Endicott, Namde Azeredo and Edith Cortright, were all portrayed and analyzed to give such as sustained picture of the art-world, before which Samuel Dodsworth was a sensitive student.
In his former life, he was a motor car manufacturer who had worked his way up in the life through unstinted hard work, abandoning everything in the world to secure fame for himself. So after attaining this in his life, Dodsworth felt that his life was a waste. He was in quest of culture in this world.
In England, on the first leg of the long journey in quest of culture, the Dodsworths found this country to be treading the path of decadence in culture. Men and Women were habituated to lead a life of utter promiscuity. One such embarrassing situation had forced the Dodsworths to leave for Europe in utter dismay over the conditions in England.
In Europe too, Frances Dodsworth had fallen prey to the glitter and glamour of culture practiced in Europe. It was all fake and resulted in men trapping women. For people like Frances Dodsworth, it was all quite natural and she became the victim of this easy-going life. Entertaining women of good status and men, who were culture-fads, became the practice in Europe, while, for men like Dodsworth, it became really unbearable. He was forced to lead a lazy life. He was a perfect stranger to that effete life. It soon reached a breaking point when the two had a row over his unkind impressions of her dear friends. This soon led to an estrangement between them. Dodsworth begins his quest for a lady who would understand him rightly keeping their mother country high. He would finally fall into liking Edith Cortright before he decided to leave for America and its simplistic life. But even the business America was lost in its Mammon worship and dissipation among the younger generations.
Thus Dodsworth had to exercise his discretion in learning the lessons in culture, without losing his own self.
(5) R. Senapathi - 'The Rebel in American Literature' - Students Handbook of American Literature - C.D. Narasimhaiah PP 324
(6) The Man Who Knew Coolidge (N) - Sinclair Lewis - Harcourt Brace New York - 1928 - P.275
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