Fox 1 Babbitt: a person, particularly a business or professional man, who unthinkingly follows conventional middle-class ways (Merriam-Webster). George F. Babbitt of Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis: a 46-year-old American real estate salesman who conformed unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards in the Midwestern city of Zenith in the 1920s. While he lived as a successful businessman with...Read more 795
First published in 1922, Babbitt is set during the 1920s (the Jazz Age), the period in America following World War I that is considered especially materialistic and spiritually depraved.
Politically, the country was charged with fear due to the communist revolution in Russia, with a burning mistrust of the “Reds.” In this climate of doubt and paranoia, strikes and labor unrest seemed to pose a threat of Bolshevik conspiracy. The political rhetoric was thus polarized, and the growing mistrust extended beyond communists to foreigners and any individual with radical or progressive ideas. Not surprisingly, this environment of fear resulted in a widespread urge toward “normalcy” and intellectual standardization.
In Babbitt, Lewis captures the political and personal unrest of the era, as well as the social rebellion at the heart of the Roaring Twenties. The characters include political extremists and those with overt mistrust of the opposite party (especially on the part of the conservatives). Seneca Doane, the novel’s progressive liberal, is essentially blacklisted by influential society. Men like William Eathorne and Virgil Gunch view Doane as a communist threat, and when Babbitt suddenly defends Doane and liberal politics, these men are caught between complete disbelief and threatening mistrust.
Kyle Beckley History 1921-1945 Book Analysis Nov. 30, 2006 Analysis of “Babbitt” The novel Babbitt was written by Sinclair Lewis in 1922. The book’s main character is named George Babbitt, a real estate salesman. He lives in a city called Zenith. The character of Babbitt is a conformist, a traditionalist type who Lewis is satirizing in this novel. The events of the book...Read more 492
In 1922 Sinclair Lewis published the book which won the Nobel Prize portraying the very special personage whose surname – Babbitt – became a household word, a symbol of middle–class Philistine. For the first time we meet George Follanbee Babbitt at his bed going to awaken and dreaming of the fairy child. And here, from the very beginning of his novel Lewis gives occasion to an attentive reader...Read more 420
? Skimming the Surface of Babbitt Not all of us can have a great escape with that fairy child in our dreams. In Chapter 1 part II of the satirical phenomenon, Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis; he really gives you something to ponder. In the previous section Lewis had just ended saying how the city of Zenith was “built-it seemed- for giants”, putting this city on a pedestal for its community. This...Read more 412
The aspect of youth and being young is a prevalent aspect found in George Babbitt, the main character of Sinclair Lewis” Babbitt. On the outside, Babbitt comes across as a very conformist and self-serving individual. However, upon further examination, Babbitt becomes less and less a prevalent societal figure, and more so an individual who is haunted by indecision and insecurity. Like a...Read more 227
“You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.” — — “Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.” — Page 87 — “You,” Said Dr. Yavitch, “are a middle-road liberal, and you haven’t the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I...Read more 156
William V. Spanos’s book, The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism, is less a contribution to the well-publicized ongoing debate on the politics of pedagogy than its critique. Like an intruder introducing genuine opposition into one of those homogeneous political pundit shows, Spanos collapses false oppositions that have historically concealed the complicity of humanist inquiry with the...Read more 106