Small towns are often described as serene, bucolic places full of caring people. Gopher Prairie appears, at first glance, to be one of these cities. But through Carol Kennicott's trials the true nature of these cities is revealed. In this city people are narrow-minded and despise outside influences. Carol is a young woman with great ambitions who marries a doctor from Gopher Prairie. Some citizens of the city; including Carol, Fern Mullins, and Miles Bjornstam, are individual thinkers who do not wish to conform to the ways of Gopher Prairie. When they try to maintain their foreign ways, this quaint prairie town turns into an abominable place full of rejection and prejudice against them. The town and its Village Virus essentially suck the life out of Carol by the end of the novel. In Main Street, Sinclair Lewis suggests through social setting, tone, imagery, and satire, that the short-sighted nature of Gopher Prairie can overwhelm individuals and crush their ideas, creating a truly tragic environment. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Because its natives are unwilling to accept change, Gopher Prairie has isolated itself and its views are short-sighted. When Carol and Kennicott first arrive in Gopher Prairie, Carol is struck by an unshakable sense of fear and desperation. She feels there is no hope for her to integrate or realize her goal of reforming the city. As he further explored the city, he “realized the vastness and emptiness of the land” (48). As he realizes this, Lewis juxtaposes Carol and another young girl named Bea Sorenson, who is enlightened by what she perceives as an oasis of modern culture and society. Bea was a country girl who wanted city life, so she moved to Gopher Prairie. Lewis uses satire in this way to show that the natives of the area believe that Gopher Prairie is a wonderful modern city, when in reality it is an archaic city that does not change. As Carol meets the people of the town, she realizes that they are quite uncultured and harbor bitterness towards outsiders. Later in the novel, Carol and Kennicott take a long vacation and when she returns nothing has changed. Carol thinks to herself, “she had come home! Nothing had changed. She had never been away” (429). Through this turn of phrase, Lewis suggests the futility of Carol's hopes that Gopher Prairie will change. While she has not been defeated at this point, her ideas are still oppressed by the single-minded entity made up of the immutable residents of Gopher Prairie. These citizens who oppress Carol attack any idea that comes from the outside world that does not fit their eternal ideals. The people of the country cling to their religion and their morals as the only truths in the world; a world, which they believe in, has been corrupted by reformers. They fear what they don't understand and lash out at those who make these changes. An example of this exists in the book club they created, known as Thanatopsis. This word means meditation on death, which is satirical when used in reference to a book club. In this club you only read biographies that do not arouse original thoughts. Carol seizes the opportunity and organizes a theater show and an acting group. All the people of this city want to stage plays that rely on their morals to portray a story. When Carol suggests a more enlightening work, they deem her atheistic and tactless. The people who exist in Gopher Prairie like Carol and Miles Bjornstam are called things like anarchists and atheists. City people have opinionsextremes on this type of people. Dave Dyer even goes so far as to say "'what they should do is just hang all these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing'" (66). The tone of this passage is dark and brutal. As are citizens' opinions of anyone who has thoughts that exist beyond the limits of their moral and righteous minds. Everyone in town except Carol, Miles, and a few others uses gossip and religion as the only truths in the universe. This over-reliance on personal opinions as truth causes many problems within Gopher Prairie. Because of their short-sighted opinions, Gopher Prairie residents use gossip as truth. They consume the half-truths they feed each other and use them to form their own opinions about people. Soon after the theater fiasco, Miles Bjornstam marries Bea and they have a son together. He tries his best to fit in with Gopher Prairie society, but they don't really accept him. He was seen as “the red Swede” for so long that he became an outcast. Miles attempts to succumb to the village virus for the sake of his family, but it is no use. When Bea and her son die of typhus, Miles becomes alienated again and is eventually expelled from Gopher Prairie. Gossip rages about what really happened to Bea and her son. In a conversation with Carol, Juanita Haydock says. «'Too bad for Bea... but I don't waste my sympathy on that man of hers. Everyone says he drank too much and treated his family terribly, and that's how they got sick'” (341). This shows the irony of the people's knowledge of the city, because it clearly contradicts what is known in the novel. Miles was none of the things Juanita proclaimed, and was actually a great father. Gopher Prairie defeats everything that opposes its ideals with its gossip. Through this gossip, in fact, individual thinkers are demonized, making them become social outcasts. This alienation is a sign of the city's ignorance of foreign ideas, for only those who bring an influx of new ideas are marginalized. Conformity, this is the true nature of Gopher Prairie, and those who oppose this order are always seen as outsiders in the world. city. Fern was a young teacher who comes to town and brings her modern ways with her. She is initially seen as strange and is despised by some. Then Cyrus Bogart attempts to sleep with her, which turns into rape. Mrs. Bogart believes that she has kept Cy innocent and that he is not capable of such an act. She blames Fern and says she tried to force herself on Cy, because to Mrs. Bogart, Fern is an outsider bringing corruption to the bucolic, quiet town of Gopher Prairie. In this way he permanently slanders Fern's name and causes her to be banished from the city. When Miles is first introduced, he too is an outcast and is demonized by gossip only because he doesn't function in sync with Gopher Prairie's ever-conforming nature. In one of his first conversations with Carol, Miles tells her, “'I guess. I'm the town villain, Mrs. Kennicott: town atheist, and I suppose I'm an anarchist too. Anyone who doesn't love bankers and the Big Old Republican Party is an anarchist” (133). This passage explains how nonconformists are treated in a community like Gopher Prairie. They are truly marginalized not only by the physical limits of the city, but also by the social context of Gopher Prairie. When isolation or even just the fear of being an outcast becomes unbearable to handle, the village virus can arise. This is what truly brings about Carol's death. The village virus, the figurative contagion that courses through the veins of every Gopher Prairie native who conforms to the town's ideals.