In the beginning of the story we meet our "Mr. Wrenn" a very mild, very ordinary American clerk. Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He is described as "a meek little bachelor—a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache, who was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock room."Mr. Wrenn is not happy with his life; he does not want to work for the Souvenir Company and he does not want to live at Mrs. Zapp's boarding house. (Goodreads)
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935). His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."