Conclusion

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One far-reaching after effect of the Civil War was the growth of each town into a self-contained unit, with a built-in economy of its own. The division of labor setting in, there developed a class-consciousness among the residents of each village or town. The distance between any two given villages remaining inaccessible to a traveling businessman, the growth of railways had brought them nearer. The Aristocrat, the rich farmer, had established his hold over the widely spreading village economies of the unwieldy territory of the Middle West, the area between the Mississippi and Missouri river dividing line and the Rockies to the edge of the Pacific. While the eastern part of America had developed an Industrial and Banking system, the West remained exclusively Adrarian in economy. The relative poverty of the latter economy had resulted in an exodus of the population into the East. Also the channeling of finances into the marginal small business had resulted in the take over by Giant business edging out the small businessman. The growth of organization as a factor of production in Economics had displayed the Veblenian concept of Engineer-Organizer in the too-slowly mechanizing Industrial World. Against the background of economic transition, some of the characters like George F. Babbitt and Samuel Dodsworth were created by Sinclair Lewis, who had to wage a lone losing war against a fast changing society.

The narrow-minded attitude of the people with dollar-chasing as the be-all and end-all of their life, living in a small town with a single main street could have been found in any town, Gopher Prairie or even Zenith. Their lives were extremely dull with no entertainment or with no sense of refinement in their lives. The people were highly conceited and were living in an Ivory Tower of their own. Business prosperity was their only sign of success. The democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers of the nation could not for long remain immune to the sweeping changes in society. Commercialism came in as a tide to pollute the older society, through corruption, grab and an amoral tendency. This was the general tendency of an American in the Twenties.The self-conscious nature of the original Americans could stem the rot in society with some degree of success. The contribution of Sinclair Lewis in restoring society to its former level of normalcy cannot be ignored by any student of Lewis’ fiction between 1920 and 1929. The fiction of this period “Main Street” (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), “Elmer Gantry” (1927), “The Man Who Knew Coolidge” (1928), and Dodsworth (1929) has transcendental value.

Through these, the author not only took pains to caricature the evils of the Upper Middle Class but also strove to hold high the virtues of the Lower Middle Class, their practicality, pragmatism, and hard and sincere work.

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