Consumer Culture & Babbitt
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The character of George Babbitt in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is the author's image of the middle-American businessman of the age, a man constantly struggling with his identity in his society and eager always to live up to the image he believes society sees as most superior. This image is based on the developing consumer culture, and Babbitt is a man who seeks to buy all the goods possible and to display them as trophies in his home in order to show the world that he is a success. What Babbitt wants is to be accepted in the terms he believes society has set, in terms of business ability, the accumulation of money, the right social image, and certain core American values. In truth, though, Babbitt never achieves the happiness and satisfaction he desires and instead is constantly disappointed in the things he buys to make himself happy. As D.J. Dooley notes, Babbitt is doomed to disappointment because he really is inadequate himself: But instead of allowing us to infer the limitations of his hero, Lewis himself points them out: he stresses that in a city which seems built for giants George F. Babbitt is really a pygmy (Dooley 83). Babbitt's home and office are both reflections of the man, who himself would agree without seeing how empty each may be. His home has been decked out with the best furniture and the latest gadgets, furnished with "the best of taste, the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences" (14).
. . .
though as a family man he is not very assiduous:
Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeve (214).
Babbitt gives much more attention to his office, seeing it as a reflection of his own social position. He likes to admire the office as he looks down from his cage in the main room, overlooking the salesmen and others who make the real estate business work: "Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should have created this lovely thing. . . " (32). His sense of pride extends to the machines he purchases for the office as well, and it is how expensive these are that is most pleasing to him:
He looked down at the relentless stretch of tiled floor at the water cooler, and assured himself that no tenant of the Reeves building had a more expensive one, but he could not recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him" (32).
The most powerful feeling Babbitt gets comes when he spends money on something like this watercooler, though it is a feeling that dissipates over time so that he must always seek out the next major purchase, the
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Babbitt American, George Babbitt, American Dream, Chamber Commerce, Sinclair Lewis, Hotel Thornleigh, Country Club, DJ Dooley, City Prison, Archie Bunker, 42 babbitt, believes society, life babbitt, sinclair lewis, george babbitt, babbitt house,
Approximate Word count = 1340
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Consumer Culture & Babbitt
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
