Character Clues

Character Analysis

Clothing

One of the first things Carol notices about Will Kennicott is that his clothes are completely unmemorable. This is kind of an early warning sign that the two of them might not be totally compatible, but Carol ignores it.

It's only later in the book that Carol finally meets a young man named Erik Valbourg who puts a ton of thought into his clothing. Actually, he puts in so much thought into it that the other men of Gopher Prairie call him girly and make fun of him.

For Carol, though, Erik's attention to his appearance is highly attractive. The truth is that Carol is herself tired of being called out every single time she wears something that's slightly out of the ordinary for Gopher Prairie. In fact, the way that people in town gossip about people's clothing just goes to show how little they have going on in their lives.

Occupation

Gopher Prairie might be a small town, but a person's job still has a lot to do with his or her position in the local hierarchy. Will Kennicott, for example, can't imagine the idea of doing anything social with his barber because he himself is a doctor. Sure, he believes in democracy in a theoretical way, but when it comes to everyday practice, he considers himself to be above the town's laborers and low income-earners.

Carol thinks it's disgraceful to judge people according to their jobs, but she's in a very small minority on this one. Most of the folks in Gopher Prairie agree with Will and would never think about socializing with people below them on the pecking order.

Physical Appearances

One of the first things we hear about Will Kennicott is that he's "thick." This turns out to be a fairly accurate description of his mind, too. It's not to say that the guy is dumb, but he has a strong self-assurance that is almost impossible for Carol to break through with her criticism.

It's also significant that almost all of Will's male friends in Gopher Prairie look a lot like him, at least in Carol's mind—and that's because for Carol, these men are pretty much all the same. It takes a thin, effeminate-looking boy like Erik Valbourg to remind Carol that men can look different from the guys in Gopher Prairie. It's no mistake that Carol is attracted to Erik's appearance, since he represents something totally different from what she's used to.

Social Status

Don't let all the talk about democracy fool you: the folks of Gopher Prairie can be total snobs when it comes to social status. Carol, on the other hand, thinks that the farmers and laborers who live around Gopher Prairie are way more authentic than the middle-class drones she hangs out with, but whenever she decides to air this opinion, she nearly gets shouted down for being a crank and a socialist.

Basically, the middle-class folks in Gopher Prairie are perfectly happy to believe that they are fundamentally better than the lazy farmers who do nothing all day but watch plants grow (yeah, riiight). Carol doesn't back down, though: she never really stops resisting this class bias, and she uses any opportunity she can to remind the people of Gopher Prairie that they're a bunch of parasites living off the honest work of lower-income people.

Why is the farmers' and laborers' income so low, anyway, if they're the ones supporting the whole town with their products? Beats Carol.

Thoughts and Opinions

If there is anything that drives a wedge between Carol Kennicott and the other people of Gopher Prairie, it's their thoughts and opinions on just about everything. So, yeah, that's a big wedge.

Carol thinks that Gopher Prairie is a cultural wasteland, but everyone else thinks it's just about the dandiest town in America. Carol thinks that the middle class of Gopher Prairie is just a parasite benefitting from the hard work of the surrounding farmers and laborers, but the Gopher Prairie faithful are convinced that they are a different species of human that's totally superior to the dirty farmers.

We could go on, but the main point is that Carol is progressive, and the folks of Gopher Prairie are conservative. At the beginning of the book, Carol dreams about changing the town and pulling it forward, but she quickly finds out that the town will likely never change; if anything, it'll actually change her.