Word: gadd
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sinclair Lewis' new novel concerns Aaron Gadd, a carpenter by trade, who by a singular series of half-convictions, and somewhat to his own surprise, becomes a missionary to the Sioux Indians...
...meeting comes to Adams, however, and Aaron, aged 25, finds himself at the mourners' bench without quite knowing how he got there, the book takes on a distinctive air that makes it unusual among drum-and-petticoat books and also among Lewis' own 20 previous novels. Aaron Gadd tries to be a Christian...
...proletarian happy ending he persuades the union to accept a runaway Negro bricklayer as an equal, whereupon both he and Selene are voted honorary members. Author Lewis never lets the reader know whether, in his opinion, Aaron Gadd has found...
Urbane Indians. Unlike Elmer Gantry or the other pious hypocrites in Lewis' fiction, Aaron Gadd is an honest man. It is remarkable that at 64, after a career of vigorous scoffing, Lewis has written a serious study of an idealistic minister and presented him as a sensible and sympathetic character. It is still more remarkable that he has done so without ridiculing Aaron's personal struggle for grace and his hope of salvation, that he has made the forlorn life of the mission adventurous despite the total lack of adventurous incident, and that he has never...
...deeper difficulty is that the world around Aaron Gadd never seems to be the world of 1848. Doubtless there were revivalists as blunt as the Reverend Mr. Chippler, missionaries as self-seeking as Balthazar Harge and theologians as long-winded as Deacon Popplewood. But there were others, too. Whatever else Americans had or lacked 100 years ago, a belief in God was fundamental to most of them. In The God-Seeker, except for Aaron Gadd, Author Lewis leaves it only to Babbitts in frock coats...