How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"I wonder if these farmers aren't bigger than we are? So simple and hardworking. The town lives on them. We townies are parasites, and yet we feel superior to them." (5.1.22)
Carol often thinks that the farmers are the most authentic people she knows. All her middle class friends seem like a bunch of leeches compared to these hardworking folks. If the middle and upper-class residents are lying to themselves about the reality of the conditions in town, does that make their lives somehow inauthentic? Is Carol right about them?
Quote #5
"I can't see any use in this high-art stuff that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod on." (5.5.21)
The laborers of Gopher Prairie aren't really interested in high art. All they care about are stories and songs that help them forget about their crummy lives for an hour or so. That way, it'll be easier for them to get back to work the next day.
Quote #6
Then in a shy avalanche arrived the entire aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, or possessed of grandparents born in America. (6.4.1)
There are two things that get you into the respected "upper class" of Gopher Prairie. Either you earn a certain amount of money each year, or you have grandparents who were born in America. In other words, people of Lewis's time respected families that had been in America before the big immigration wave of the late 1800s. Hello, racism and classism.