Fascism on the Plains in "Capital City"

Abstract

Mari Sandoz, Western writer and Great Plains historian, uncovered issues that the individual finds in negotiating the corrupt community or state in the Midwest. Her 1939 text, Capital City, depicts a corrupt allegorical Midwestern city and captures the ways in which the individual, as part of a larger social unit, fights for power in the community and for equal rights versus a corrupt state. Capital City is a part of her efforts to advocate for disenfranchised farmers, laborers, and workers of the Great Plains region. Her work clearly explicates how individuals with a common ideology can function within a community or social unit to unite for social protest. My research will ascertain how Sandoz’s historical fiction comments on the rights of the worker and, more importantly, the effect of her writing.