In this final essay, we return to the title itself: Travel Is So Broadening. Is it celebration, satire, or something more unsettling? This blog considers whether experience automatically produces growth — and why the real broadening in this story may belong not to the traveler, but to the reader willing to examine him.
In this second essay, we turn from voice to ethics. What does Mr. Schmaltz’s language reveal about how he sees other people? Here we examine how casual generalizations, small cruelties, and confident judgments create the illusion of superiority — and why Lewis never has to accuse his narrator directly. The critique is embedded in the way the story unfolds.
In this first essay, we examine the voice of Travel Is So Broadening. Before we judge what Mr. Schmaltz thinks, we need to understand how he speaks. Sinclair Lewis lets a man talk — and in doing so, reveals far more about him than the man ever intends. This blog explores how first-person narration becomes the story’s sharpest instrument of exposure.
In this blog, we confront the novel’s most unsettling truth: retreating from the world does not protect us from it. Henry tries to build a private refuge with Catherine, away from war, politics, and consequence. But Hemingway does not allow illusions to survive. The ending forces us to ask whether Henry has learned anything at all — or whether detachment has simply taken a new form.
If Book I and II of A Farewell to Arms show us Frederic Henry drifting, Book III forces him to choose.
Most readers approach A Farewell to Arms as a tragic love story set against the chaos of war. They remember Catherine’s devotion, the retreat from Caporetto, the rain at the end. They speak of loss, of inevitability, of the brutality of history swallowing private happiness.
The Most Dangerous Game ends with a sentence that has bothered readers for generations: “He had never slept in a better bed.”
By the time Rainsford realizes he is the prey, The Most Dangerous Game has already crossed its most important threshold. Fear has entered the story.
At the beginning of The Most Dangerous Game, Sanger Rainsford is not cruel. He is not evil. He is something far more common—and far more dangerous. He is certain.
This third essay argues that Duncan’s murder is not the center of Macbeth — Banquo is. Because obsession doesn’t end when it gets what it wants. It intensifies, shifts targets, and begins eliminating anything that threatens permanence — especially the future. In Macbeth, the crown isn’t the finish line. It’s the beginning of the real catastrophe.