Burt Lancaster
Elmer Gantry
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Plot Summary. Published in 1926, Elmer Gantry is a classic fiction novel by Sinclair Lewis. Set in the 1920s, the novel is a satire of American religious attitudes at the time. The story follows the titular character, a charismatic preacher with a secret love of vice, as he experiences several ups and downs and eventually becomes the minister ...
Complete summary of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of Elmer Gantry.
Summaries. A fast-talking traveling salesman with a charming, loquacious manner convinces a sincere evangelist that he can be an effective preacher for her cause. Elmer Gantry is a fast-talking, hard-drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqué story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike.
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry (New York, 1927) is a ferocious satire against Protestant fundamentalist religion in the American Midwest. It tells the story of a hypocritical, corrupt, but very successful preacher named Elmer Gantry. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist ...
Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. His father was a physician. In 1903, Lewis went to Yale University, where he served as editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. During his Yale career Lewis also traveled widely, including a trip to England working on a cattle boat, and he also...
Chapters 1–8
Elmer Gantrybegins in 1902. Elmer Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, have traveled from their college in Kansas to Cato, Missouri, to see their girlfriends. After dinner, the drunken Elmer picks a fight with a man who is heckling Eddie Fislinger, a fellow Terwillinger College student, as he preaches to an outdoor crowd. Eddie spreads the word that Elmer, who has never shown any zeal for religion, has been converted. Jim tries to persuade Elmer not to go along with it, but when Elmer atten...
Chapters 9–16
Under pressure from Elmer, Shallard resigns. Lulu becomes devoted to Elmer but he gets bored with her. Lloyd Naylor, who is in love with Lulu, complains to Lulu’s father about Elmer’s amorous conduct towards her. Bains and Naylor confront Elmer at the Seminary and tell him he must marry Lulu. Elmer is forced to agree, but promises himself he will find a way out of the engagement. He behaves cruelly to Lulu, and when Floyd comforts her with a kiss, Elmer, who has planned the whole incident, bu...
Media Adaptations
1. Elmer Gantry was made into a movie and released by United Artists in 1960, starring Burt Lancasteras Elmer and Jean Simmons as Sharon Falconer. Both actors won Academy Awards for their performances.
Cecil Aylston
Cecil Aylston is Sharon Falconer’s assistant. He is a well-educated Englishman in his early thirties with a colorful past. He fell in love with Sharon when he first met her, and is devoted to her. After Sharon dismisses him in favor of Elmer, Cecil tries to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo. He dies in a gambling den.
Barney Bains
Barney Bains is a deacon at the Baptist church in Schoenheim and the father of Lulu. Bains initially forces Elmer to agree to marry Lulu, but later, after Elmer shows him Lulu kissing Floyd Naylor, he orders Lulu to marry Floyd.
Lulu Bains
Lulu Bains is the daughter of Barney Bains. Elmer tries to seduce her, but once she has become devoted to him he gets bored with her and treats her cruelly. She is forced by her father to marry Lloyd Naylor. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. After Elmer dumps her for Hettie, Lulu loses interest in life.
Anti-clericalism
Throughout the novel, clergymen and the church are presented in an extremely unflattering light. For the most part they are hypocrites, not even believing the doctrines they preach to their congregations every week. Judson Roberts, the enthusiastic, apparently confident evangelist who converts Elmer, admits to himself that his preaching is dishonest. He plans to quit the church and get a good job selling real estate. The attack on the hypocrisy of Protestant ministers continues throughout the...
Topics for Further Study
1. Discuss the issue of creationism and evolution. Should creationism be taught in public schools? Is there really a conflict between science and religion, between reason and faith, or can the two live in harmony? 2. Watch the 1960 film version of Elmer Gantry. Is Elmer the same in the movie as he is in the novel, or have the filmmakers altered his character? What are the major differences between the film and the novel? 3. Write a brief character sketch of Frank Shallard and describe his rol...
Liberalism versus Literalism
Within the Protestant church, a battle rages between the traditionalists, or fundamentalists, who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and the liberals, who believe that some parts of the Bible may be understood in a symbolic sense. The fundamentalists also have to deal with outright skeptics, like Jim Lefferts, and covert atheists like Dr. Zechlin. Terwillinger College and Mizpah Theological Seminary are both fundamentalist institutions. When Lefferts asks Reverend Quarles, the college...
Picaresque
Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. There is no character development, and so Elmer, after his character is first established, does not change during the course of the novel. The main purpose of the picaresque novel (a modern example of which is Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March), is satire. Satire ridicules its subject, with the intention of arousing conte...
Fundamentalism
Protestant fundamentalism was in part a reaction in the early twentieth century to the development of the “higher criticism” in Biblical scholarship. Higher criticism was a method of Biblical criticism that originated in Germany. It applied the methods of historical and literary analysis in order to determine the authorship, date and place of composition of the books of the Bible. Higher criticism also showed that some elements in the Bible were also found in other religions and mythologies (...
Compare & Contrast
1. 1920s: From 1920 to 1933, the sale of alcohol is prohibited in the United States. The aim is to reduce crime and other social problems and improve health. However, although alcohol consumption does decrease, crime and corruption around alcohol increase. Public officials are bribed by gangsters to overlook illegal brewing and selling of alcohol. Today: Advocates for the legalization of marijuana use arguments drawn from the experience of Prohibition. They claim that banning marijuana leads...
Revivalism
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many evangelists, like Elmer and Sharon Falconer in the novel, who traveled around the country conducting revival campaigns for large audiences. One famous evangelist was Gipsy Smith (1860–1947), an Englishman who made twenty-six trips to the United States. On his first visit in 1889, he held campaigns in cities from Boston to San Francisco. In 1928, he preached in a tent in Long Beach, California to more than 5,000 people,...
On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. According to Mark Schorer, in his introduction to Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, “No novel in the history of American literature outraged its audience so completely, and very few novels in American literaturehad a larger immediate audience.” The book was banned in Boston...
Bryan Aubrey
Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. In this essay, Aubrey discusses how Lewis’s characterization in Elmer Gantry serves his satiric purpose. Institutionalized religion has attracted its fair share of satirical assaults in its time, but Elmer Gantrymust surely rank as the most savage in American literature. Lewis is like a ruthless hunter who spares nothing and still has ammunition left at the end of the day. It is a fairly narrow as...
What Do I Read Next?
1. Lewis’s Arrowsmith(1925) is one of his most admired novels. It portrays the career of Martin Arrowsmith, a dedicated, idealistic physician and truth-seeker who is severely tested by the cynicism he encounters in the medical profession. 2. The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), by Harold Frederic, has many similarities to Elmer Gantry. The Reverend Theron Ware is a young, ambitious Methodist minister whose encounter with the new intellectual ideas of “higher criticism” and Darwinism destroys...
Martin Light
In the following essay excerpt, Light examines quixotic elements inElmer Gantry. The angriest of Lewis’s novels, Elmer Gantryseems to arise from impulses that invert the quixotic. Elmer, after all, is not an idealist; though he ventures forth, he does not do so in the name of chivalry; and, finally, he does not practice the transmuting powers of fancy. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize the working of quixotic elements throughout the novel, especially in the fancifully conceived Sharon...
Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. 47–48; originally published in the Bookman, March 1927. Grebstein, Sheldon Norman, Sinclair Lewis, Twayne United States Authors Series, No. 14, Twayne, 1962, pp. 99–107. Lundquist, James, Sinclair Lewis, Frederick Ungar ...
Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. There is no character ...
Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry (New York, 1927) is a ferocious satire against Protestant fundamentalist religion in the American Midwest. It tells the story of a hypocritical, corrupt, but very successful preacher named Elmer Gantry.
Elmer Gantry, American film drama, released in 1960, that was an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the same name and featured Academy Award-winning performances by Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones. Lancaster portrayed the title character, a charlatan evangelist who joins a ministry headed by Sister Sharon Falconer (played by Jean Simmons).
