“He rose from the chair and ventured a joke on his own. “Three months and I’ll be on the Road to Wellville, eh?””
The only part of the novel that actually refers to the title is Will’s faux pas that will forever put him in doctor Kellogg’s bad graces. The phrase “road to wellville” comes from the doctor’s direct competitor C.W. Post, a cereal breakfast inventor. Both doctor Kellogg and Post were real people, and the competition and contempt between them was real. The novel is a satirical commentary that ridicules the self-righteous and self-obsessed persona of the doctor.
“Here he was, the messiah of health, a pillar of strength, a man who prided himself on devotion and indefatigabillity, and he didn’t feel like mounting the podium-and who would spread the gospel, who would improve the race, if he faltered?”
John Kellogg is a man striving for perfection and sterility, and he built the Sanatorium as a place to heal the human race out of the filth and debauchery of human instinctive urges. There is only one flaw in his life, and that is his adopted son George. George is the perfect opposite of what doctor Kellogg stands for, and George’s sole existence haunts him. Even in his lowest moments he lifts himself up with his self-importance and righteousness, and it is what he does when it comes to his renegade, rebellious son.
“Maybe, he thought, huddling under the onslaught of the pounding leathery fists and twisting his leg almost casually beneath the grip of the probing teeth, just maybe I’ve seen wrong, maybe my entire life has been a sham.”
In the climactic ending with Doctor Kellogg and the sore of his eye, George, facing off in a fight in the Sanatorium while the entire staff and patients are watching the fireworks outside, the self-righteous doctor has a short moment of epiphany, of doubt in his self and his life’s work. For once, finding himself in a position of vulnerability, he starts to take other points of view into consideration, other than his own. This doesn’t last long, and he lifts himself back up with self-righteous pep-talk, but it does show a crack in the doctor’s perfect image. But, rather than giving it much thought and considering the effects of his actions, he decides to extinguish the source that made him self-reflect and doubt himself, namely George.
