Babbitt
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Babbitt is a classic novel by the American novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis, first published in 1922. It is a satire about American values, and its main theme is the power of conformity and the vacuity of American life.
The book takes its name from the principal character, George Babbitt, a middle-aged real estate salesman. He lives a successful life professionally, but he is unhappy. He lives in a fictional Midwestern town called "Zenith," whose chief virtue is conformity and whose religion is boosterism. He gradually becomes disillusioned with his lifestyle and then rebels against it. However, he eventually finds himself too weak to do so, and lapses back into conformity by the end of the novel.
One of the historical notes about the book is its use of the political word "liberal" from Chapter XXVI (26) and following. The book was written not too long after the project of new liberalism began, and so the term had not yet congealed in the US as standing for a specific stance of the moderate left as in the later New Deal. Babbitt takes to the word liberal as literally meaning "not instantly critical of the left", rather than as an agenda for a set of social programs, and even though he is a conservative businessman.
External links
- Notes from PinkMonkey.com (http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/barrons/babbitt2.asp)
- Babbitt (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new?id=LewBabb&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0) by Sinclair Lewis
- Template:Gutenberg
Disambiguation
Other meanings:
- A babbitt is also a type of bearing. See Bearing (mechanical), Babbitt metal.
- Bruce Babbitt (born 1938) was United States Secretary of the Interior during the Clinton administration. See his article.
- Babbit is rumored to be the source word for Tolkien's hobbit.
- Babbitt, is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota.