Book Review — Babbit (Sinclair Lewis)
Published by Sinclair Lewis in 1922, Babbit is a satirical novel reflecting the American society’s different aspects, including materialism, social class, and societal pressures towards conformity. More than 100 years after its publication, these themes are still relevant today. The timeless and universal questions raised in the book — man’s search for meaning, social comparison, peer pressure, and intricate family relationships — are controversial and thought provoking.
Along with his other publication “Main Street”, “Babbit” presents America as the subject of satire. Both published in the 1920s, the duo achieved instant literary and commercial success, and were instrumental towards Sinclair Lewis’s Nobel Prize of literature award in 1930.
I was charmed by Sinclair Lewis’s distinct writing style, as he captures characters vividly with a realistic and humane stroke, manifesting the multi-faceted personality of key characters in dialogue, inner-struggles, capricious behaviors. He captures the mundane quotidian of Babbit with humor and satire, and has a remarkable ability of depicting the inner dialogue of characters with tight and realist prose — struggles, vanity, insecurities, hypocrisy, and search for meaning. “Babbit” is a reflection of our common humanity, to a certain extent. We remain challenged by our sense of purpose, our comfort in regulated familiarity, our codependence in society, and our resistance against change. I see “Babbit” not as an American challenged by the middle-age crisis, but as a character that reflects our own search for meaning in life.
Lively Descriptions in realist prose:
Sinclair Lewis does an excellent job of portraying Babbit in the opening chapter, and continues to do so in other characters in the rest of the book. “He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping- porch. He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty. He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them. To the eye, he was the perfect office-going executive, well fed in a correct brown soft hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, and driving a good motor…” were descriptions of Babbit in the opening chapter.
Materialism and Babbit’s spiritual search
Materialism is one of the subjects of satire in the book. Babbit has “everything” that he needs — his family is well fed, his real estate business is successful, he plays golf and smokes expensive cigars. Yet despite ample material wealth, he craves for spiritual stimulation and rebels towards societal norms. He dreams of the “fairy girl”, explores an affair with Tanis, and refuses to join Zenith’s prestigious community clubs.
“In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them; but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. He was restless again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.”
Some might say that Babbit’s rebellion is typical of a “middle age crisis” amid his ritualized quotidian. Yet delving deeper into the surface of his discontent, we find that he is lacking in spiritual inspiration. The spiritual treasures of literature, arts, religion, and deep interpersonal connection within his community are arid and dull. I thought about Tony Judt’s essay “Girls girls girls” in the book “The Memory Chalet”, where he writes that he conquered his middle age crisis by learning Czech (and divorcing his second wife). A contrast of middle-age rebellion, between Babbit’s mundane endeavors and that of contemporary intellectuals?
Well placed contrasts — social ranks and affairs
Social class is another subject that the book delves into. Babbit is proud about his business endeavors yet insecure about his social standing in the Zenith community. “In the city of Zenith, in the barbarous twentieth century, a family’s motor indicated its social rank as precisely as the grades of the peerage determined the rank of an English family.”
In the book, Babbit reaches out to a business leader who is an old school mate to have dinner together in an alumnus gathering. That dinner was strained and unnatural, and attendees felt uncomfortable. “But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no reason that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously and unwillingly.” In the following chapter, another old pal of Babbit with a lower social standing reaches out to him, and proposes dinner together. (Sinclair Lewis writes in such realist prose that the contrasting situations seem conflicting yet natural.) “Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing to interest him in Overbrook’s timorousness, the blankness of the other guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles, drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it sank like soggy cake.” Are people of these social rankings different? Or are they similar indeed — their aspirations for a higher social standing, their insecurities in social comparisons — as humans conditioned by societal règles and peer pressure?
What is Babbit looking for? What is he breaking free from?
Is Babbit breaking free from a society of standardized thought and grounded rules? What makes man content along the journey of the search of meaning? In the end of the book, Babbit reunites “spiritually” to his wife, after her illness. “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.” With the unprecedented predicament and the return of his family responsibility, Babbit walks out of his spiritual dramas — his affairs, rebellion, fantasy, and desires. He is embraced by his community, he returns to his wife, he becomes “a good citizen” again. Standardization of thought and rigid social order are the subjects of criticism in the book, yet they also reward Babbit when he returns to the “right path”. There is no clear answer in the extent of how societal values should and could shape individual beliefs and community values — this is a subject left for thought.
His last words (in the book) to his son leaves readers with an interesting note. “Practically, I’ve never done a single thing I’ve wanted to in my whole life! I don’t know ‘s I’ve accomplished anything except just get along. I figure out I’ve made about a quarter of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you’ll carry things on further. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don’t be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I’ve been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!”
