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Babbitt (1922)

The Hungry Mind Review's 100 Best 20th Century Books

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
-Jeremiah, 6:16

Odd, isn't it, that George F. Babbitt should be one of the most reviled characters in American literature? What, after all, is his great crime ? It's not that he's a conformist; we're all conformists of one kind or another; such is the nature of social creatures. No, the problem with George Babbitt, that which has so incensed intellectuals for some eighty-odd years is the set of ideas that he conforms to : Middle American ideals--hard work, thrift, salesmanship, conservatism, Christianity, family values, monogamy, the whole panoply of traditional morays of which the Left is so contemptuous.

George's story is fairly simple. A successful Realtor in the booming midwestern city of Zenith, married with three children, George is a pillar of the community and a support to his family, but he's not happy. Everyone is always coming to him with their complaints about life, but he's never supposed to question his lot. Then his friend, Paul Riesling, begins to express his own dissatisfaction and together the two begin to sow some wild oats. George goes along on a trip to Maine without their wives, but eventually Paul sprints ahead by first having an affair and then shooting his wife.

George, who had tried reigning Paul in, now proceeds to have his own affair with the widow Tanis Judique. He also starts to hang out with some of Tanis's scruffy friends and to vocally question the received wisdom of Zenith's business community. But George's wife, Myra, finds out about the affair and George's business partners bail out on a few deals. Meanwhile, George discovers that Tanis, though her life seemed freer at first, is just as bound by societal conventions as he.

With his own business now suffering and the bloom off of his new romance, George is already beginning to waiver, and when Myra comes down with a potentially deadly case of appendicitis, he realizes that he wants his old life back. Myra and his friends welcome him back to the fold.

In a final scene, George's son elopes, and he surprises everyone by accepting the marriage. He even tells the boy that he should seize his opportunities now, because he (George) never truly did anything he wanted to his whole life.

Now I understand that on the surface this does seem like an indictment of middle America, but it also reads like a cautionary tale, defending Zenith and its citizens from the notion that they'd be happier if they rebelled. In fact, the most convincing and moving moments in the whole book come when George returns to Myra :

Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.

Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through
    which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the
    standard and traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand
    steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic
    languor of morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many
    weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.

He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat
    lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to
    lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He
    napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he
    wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite
    form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and
    the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to
    have been aroused by Verona's entrance and her agitated "Oh, what is it, Dad?"

His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light, but now he did not compare
    her with Tanis; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his own self,
    and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself,
    interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing--or any real desire to
    change--the eternal essence.

Forgive me if I'm being overly obtuse, but doesn't that "eternal" make it sound like Lewis is serious about this, that this relationship is the touchstone of Babbitt's existence and should be ?

Likewise, perhaps the truest and certainly the funniest social criticism in the book is aimed not at the good people of Zenith, but at those who would change them. When The Reverend Mike Monday, who might easily be nothing but a caricature of a huckster preacher, comes to town, he says the following in his sermon :

There's a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in this burg that say I'm a
    roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledge of history is not-yet. Oh, there's a gang of
    woolly-whiskered book-lice that think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hun
    science and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Word of God. Oh, there's a swell
    bunch of Lizzie boys and lemon-suckers and pie-faces and infidels and beer-bloated scribblers that
    love to fire off their filthy mouths and yip that Mike Monday is vulgar and full of mush. Those
    pups are saying now that I hog the gospel-show, that I'm in it for the coin. Well, now listen, folks!
    I'm going to give those birds a chance! They can stand right up here and tell me to my face that
    I'm a galoot and a liar and a hick! Only if they do...if they do...don't faint with surprise if some
    of those rum-dumm liars get one good swift poke from Mike, with all the kick of God's Flaming
    Righteousness behind the wallop! Well, come on, folks! Who says it? Who says Mike Monday is a
    fourflush and a yahoo? Huh? Don't I see anybody standing up? Well, there you are! Now I guess
    the folks in this man's town will quit listening to all this kyoodling from behind the fence; I guess
    you'll quit listening to the guys that pan and roast and kick and beef, and vomit out filthy
    atheism; and all of you'll come in, with every grain of pep and reverence you got, and boost all
    together for Jesus Christ and his everlasting mercy and tenderness!

Sure, Lewis may have thought this was so over-the-top as to preclude the reader paying any heed to the message, or he may have meant it as nothing more than self-deprecating humor, but isn't it at least possible that he suspected we'd prefer this kind of muscular Christianity to the offerings of the lemon-sucking professors, maybe even that he himself preferred it ? If Monday is supposed to be one of the bad guys, ask yourself this, outside of Richard III, when's the last time you recall the bad guy getting such funny lines at the expense of the good guys ?

At any rate, however Lewis intended us to take the story of George Babbitt and his abortive rebellion, the past eighty years have certainly vindicated the morality, even the hypocrisy, of Zenith and its most famous resident. George Babbitt is really one of the heroes of American Literature, all the more so because he chafes at the tugging of the reins but keeps pulling the wagon. Of such sacrifices are great nations and great cultures made.

(Reviewed:05-Sep-01)

Grade: (A)

Websites:

Comments:

what most of u are missing is that george babbitt is what most people in the working world are: unsatisfaction with life hidden by the guises of being a family man, being in the 'in' crowd, or 'that guy with the nice car'. he's not a hero. he's a human.

- some dude

- May-08-2005, 11:17

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" Bottom line: conformity is not heroic. What is heroic is thriving to be an individual, as Socrates was, as Kierkegaard was, as the Buddha was. Our man Babbitt had no depth of selfhood. He was not interested in knowledge or the meaning of things. His values were false ones: money and showing off. He loved his family, but all questionable people have 'loyalty' of some kind (Hitler for Germany, Al Capone for his family).

- Dennis the Menace

- Aug-09-2004, 23:28"

- oj

- Aug-10-2004, 12:44

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So Babbitt is indeed heroic in that he conforms to societal norms and takes care of his dependents even though he'd rather be footloose and fancy free.

- oj

- Aug-08-2004, 20:02

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Orrin writes:

"Odd, isn't it, that George F. Babbitt should be one of the most reviled characters in American literature? What, after all, is his great crime ? It's not that he's a conformist; we're all conformists of one kind or another; such is the nature of social creatures. No, the problem with George Babbitt, that which has so incensed intellectuals for some eighty-odd years is the set of ideas that he conforms to : Middle American ideals--hard work, thrift, salesmanship, conservatism, Christianity, family values, monogamy, the whole panoply of traditional morays of which the Left is so contemptuous."

The internet is chock full of websites created by pseudo-intellectuals who have no wherewithall for academia. These people are not authors or teachers. Many of them are not even graduates. I do not know Orrin's academic achievements, or failings, but the above criticism of "Babbitt" has almost no textual support, and like most bad arguments, it hides on the Internet.

He asks what Babbitt's great crime is. It is conformity. Orrin objects that all men are conformists in some measure, and therefore our difficulty with Babbitt can't be his conformity. But that is the point: conformity occurs in degrees, and Babbitt's level of conformity is alarmingly high. Orrin goes on to say that Babbitt conforms to traditional values like "hard work" and "salesmenship" and "Christianity". Leftists dislike this, he says. This, too, is off the mark. Readers are not objecting to hard work or Christianity. Readers are objecting to a man who does anything to keep up appearances, as for example his collection of books which were meant for show, only. Readers are objecting to his lack of self-control, his childish behaviour, his cowardness in social life, his dishonesty in business. Beyond this: we object to his living in fear. At the end of the book Babbitt seems to have matured and advises his son not to live his life in fear as he did. He tells his son in no uncertain terms: my whole life I've never done anything I've wanted. This, then, is our problem with Babbitt. I do not think the man is detestable or substantially different than a lot of people. On the contrary, too many people are like him, which is why he is so familiar and convincing as a character. Babbitt is a weak man who achieves our admiration only at the end of the novel, when he confesses the truth about himself, at which point he can possibly evolve into a better person. Up until that point, he is not at all admirable. To say otherwise, as Orrin has, is playing the game of devil's advocate and nothing more.

- Dennis

- Aug-08-2004, 15:01

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That was our first choice, but the URL was already registered

- The Brothers

- Nov-24-2003, 09:08

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A name change is in order here; the following is a more appropriate name for whatever it is that you do: Right Wing Revisionist Book Reviewing Idiot.

- Joseph

- Nov-24-2003, 02:56

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im so confused

- Megan

- Sep-30-2003, 22:03

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if a native american kid in the 1500's hated fishing and hunting, he was shit out of luck. Likewise, if a Hindu Indian kid in the 1800's hated the caste to which he was assigned, he was in a similar predicament. this book is a love letter to american middle-class society. babbit has the leisure time to sit around and decide whether his life is fulfilling. he lives in a society where he can up and change his life 180 degrees at the drop of a hat. this shows how efficient and free his society actually is.

- u

- Jul-29-2003, 15:38

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Liked the review--you spelled "mores" wrong, though. The way you have it spelled-- "morays"-- you're referring to a dangerous, tropical eel. :-)

- Jessica

- Jul-16-2003, 23:05

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Babbitt (1922)

The Hungry Mind Review's 100 Best 20th Century Books

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