"Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis

Gliederung

• Sinclair Lewis: The author and his times
• The plot
• George F. Babbitt
• Myra Babbitt
• Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt
• Verona Babbitt
• Seneca Doane
• T. Cholomondeley Frink
• Vergil Grunch
• Tanis Judique
• Zilla Riesling
• Paul Riesling
• May Arnold
• Katharine "Tinka Babbitt"
• Fulton Bemis
• Dr. A. I. Dilling
• Sir Gerald Doak
• Sam Doppelbrau
• The reverend John Jennison Drew
• William Washington Eathorne
• Kenneth Escott
• Sidney Finkelstein
• Stanley Graff
• Healey Hanson
• Orville Jones
• Eunice Littlefield
• Howard Littlefield
• Conrad Lyte
• Theresa McGoun
• Charles McKlevey
• Lucile McKelvey
• Mike Monday
• Opal Emerson Mudge
• Carrie Nork
• Jake Offutt
• Ed Overbrook
• Joe Paradise
• Lucas Prout
• Professor Jospeh K. Pumphrey
• Ida Putiak
• Sheldon Smeeth
• Colonel Rutherford Snow
• Minnie Sonntag
• Eddie Swanson
• Louetta Swanson
• Henry T. Thompson
• Setting
• Themes
• 1. The Tyranny of business
• 2. Standardization of thought
• 3. The hypocrisy of respectable Americans
• 4. An obsession with status
• 5. An obsession with material possessions
• 6. A lack of culture
• 7. The corruption of religion
• 8. A failure of human relationships
• Style
• Form and structure
• Point of view
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Glossary
• The Babbitt type
• The importance of possessions in Babbitt
• On Babbitt
• The world of Babbitt
• Lewis's use of satire
• Lewis's writing style

Sinclair Lewis: The author and his times

If you go to any large dictionary and open it to the "B" section, you'll find two definitions that didn't exist before 1922: Babbitt - an uncultured, conformist businessman; Babbittry - smugness, conventionality, and a desire for material success. These words have become part of our vocabulary, thanks to Sinclair Lewis. Few authors in American literature have done what Lewis did in his novel about a middle-aged realtor: in George F. Babbitt he gave the world a character so vivid and indestructible that the name has come to stand not just for a single fictional character but for many American businessmen of that era as well. In some ways Sinclair Lewis was himself much like Babbitt - midwestern, ambitious, occasionally loud, sometimes obnoxious, and insecure.

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in the small town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. His father was a physician, devoted but rather harsh to his son. In later years, Lewis would describe his childhood in the prairie town as a happy series of Tom Sawyer adventures, but others remembered his life there differently. He was a homely boy, too skinny, with bright red hair and bad skin. He was no good at sports. Worse, he lived in the shadow of an athletic older brother who could do all the things Harry couldn't. Perhaps it was the insecurity Lewis felt that made him begin to write not the fiction that would one day bring him fame, but verse modeled after the works of the British poet Tennyson, full of the romance and adventure Lewis could not find in Sauk Centre.

Anxious to escape, at seventeen he convinced his father to send him to Yale, rather than to the nearby University of Minnesota. He found, though, that he didn't fit in any better there than he did in Sauk Centre. His talent as a writer earned him a place as editor of the college literary magazine, but he had few friends. His classmates, by and large, were Eastern aristocrats who had little to say to a small-town doctor's son. By his junior year, Lewis was fed up enough to quit school and join a socialist commune being formed by writer Upton Sinclair. But his interest in socialism was at best lukewarm (though you can clearly see a lingering distrust of business and an admiration for labor unions in Babbitt). After six months he left to board a ship for Panama, where he hoped to find work building the canal. No jobs were to be had, and he returned to Yale,

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