Résumé
Résumé de Les innocents
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will love this if you enjoy warm, funny stories about marriage, if you like underdogs with big plans, or if you are drawn to a story that cheers for people who refuse to grow old quietly.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Innocents is a short novel by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1917. Lewis is better known for sharp books about American towns, but this one is warm. He calls it a flagrant excursion, a tale for people who still love Dickens, old people and children. It follows Seth and Sarah Appleby, New Yorkers past sixty, who call each other Father and Mother and still hold hands in corners. Seth is a shoe clerk. Sarah keeps house and keeps him in line. Each summer they steal two weeks on Cape Cod.
You get a love story about the old, a comic picture of how easily small people are cheated, and a quiet argument that age is partly a habit of mind. Lewis tells it with jokes, with sudden tenderness, and with real anger at the way the city and respectable relatives treat the old. It begins with a pot of tea and a bill that is far too large. Let us start there, with the vacation that changes everything.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A tea room bill sparks a dreamFree
- 2The T Room opens to empty roads
- 3Hope fades after the grand visitor
- 4A rooftop escape from kindness
- 5New York turns away its old clerk
- 6Age, kindness and the comic voice
Point clé 1 sur 6
A tea room bill sparks a dream
Seth and Sarah Appleby live in a dark brown New York apartment with a tabby cat, a canary and a china hen that holds their breakfast eggs. Seth works at Pilkings and Son, a shoe store on Sixth Avenue, where old Mr. Pilkings still calls him Hey, you, Seth. Every July Seth fakes a small cough to win two weeks of leave, and Sarah worries all the while that the plan will fail.
The trip begins on a night steamer to Massachusetts. Seth wears a showy new cap and plays the brave traveler for Sarah's sake. Then, when she sleeps, he slips out on deck and shakes with fear of the dark water. By the time a lighthouse winks at him he is happy again. Seth has hidden peppermints in Sarah's boots and Sarah has hidden a new harmonica in his nightshirt, and each finds the other's surprise.
At West Skipsit they stay with Uncle Joe Tubbs and his wife on their farm. The men dig clams and paddle barefoot. The women trade gossip. In the evenings everyone plays furious cribbage on a board carved from a walrus tooth. One day the Tubbses' son-in-law drives them all to a fashionable tea shop. Seth orders boldly and pays a bill of three dollars and sixty cents without a flicker.
On the ride home Seth does sums on the back of his account book. Sandwiches cost almost nothing to make and sell for fifteen cents. That is a profit of hundreds of percent! By winter the couple have saved every nickel and chosen an old farmhouse at Grimsby Head. A smooth young Hungarian shopkeeper buys their tea-room furniture for them, and he takes a good share of their savings. Seth picks the name The T Room.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Questions about Les innocents
What is The Innocents by Sinclair Lewis about?
It tells of Seth and Sarah Appleby, an elderly New York couple. They leave shoe-store life to run a tea room on Cape Cod, then face failure, a bossy daughter and the open road, supporting each other throughout.
Why is the book called The Innocents?
The Applebys are simple, trusting and kind. Lewis uses the word for their childlike love, their faith in ideas like the tea room and their way of walking into trouble without malice.
Is The Innocents a true story?
No, it is fiction. Lewis wrote it around 1917, and it carries references to the First World War years, including a scene set in 1915, but the Applebys are invented.
What kind of book is The Innocents compared with Main Street?
It is lighter and more tender than Lewis's town satires. The humor is gentle, the chapters are short, and the story focuses on one loving couple rather than an entire community.
What is the main message of The Innocents?
Age does not decide what a person can do. Love, kindness and a willingness to start again keep people young, and the people who tell the old to sit still are often wrong.