In Chapter 2, Carol sees only "streaky" pictures of "trees, shrubbery, a porch indistinct in leafy shadows, [and] lakes" (18). The fact that she sees the pictures in Chapter 2 as "streaky" and "indistinct" symbolizes her detachment from the community. However, in Chapter 38, she sees her own house and familiar faces in the photographs, symbolizing her connection to the town. As Lewis indicates in his preface, Gopher Prairie represents a microcosm of America in the early twentieth century. Lewis creates many characters as exaggerations, or typical, rather than individuals, to suggest that the people and institutions found in Gopher Prairie can be found anywhere. By criticizing Gopher Prairie, Lewis therefore attacks American society as a whole. Carol and Vida seem to be foils in that Carol is a reformer, whereas Vida is the representation of a society reluctant to let go of their ways. Though in a passage Vida thinks that she is, “and always will be, a reformer, a liberal” (253), she puts lie to this statement at the beginning of the chapter: she displays as much open-mindedness as a nun when Lewis writes that “[s]he hated even the sound of the word ‘sex’… and prayed to Jesus…addressing him as her eternal lover” …show more content…
The first part introduces Carol, the heroine of the novel. The second part deals with her marriage and elaborates on her fears of life as the wife of Dr. Kennicott in the small prairie town. The third part describes her house warming party in which Carol makes a statement about her taste and attitude followed by the details of the trials and tribulations of Carol as a reformer of the smug town. The fourth part is the thirty-sixth chapter, which may be called the climax of the story because Carol walks out of her marriage and Gopher Prairie. The following two chapters form the fifth part which describes Carol’s work in Washington, her reconciliation to life in Gopher Prairie and it also reunites Carol and