Babbitt
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This classic satire offers a timeless and incisive critique of American middle-class values, exploring the tension between individuality and conformity that remains deeply relevant today.
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Book Summary
George F. Babbitt, a prosperous real estate salesman in the midwestern city of Zenith, grapples with a midlife crisis as he chafes against the conformity and materialism of his middle-class existence. His brief rebellion against social norms ultimately collapses, forcing him back into the comfortable but hollow embrace of his community.
The novel follows George F. Babbitt, a successful but discontented real estate agent in the fictional city of Zenith. Dissatisfied with his sterile marriage to Myra, his rebellious children, and the relentless pressure to conform, Babbitt experiences a midlife crisis marked by dreams of escape and a brief affair with the bohemian Tanis Judique. He flirts with liberal ideas, supporting a radical pastor and befriending a strike sympathizer, but faces social ostracism from the powerful Good Citizens' League. When Myra falls gravely ill with appendicitis, Babbitt's rebellion dissolves as he reconnects with his wife and family. He rejoins the League and the Boosters' Club, embracing conformity once more. The novel concludes with Babbitt reluctantly agreeing to a shady real estate deal and defending his son Ted's secret marriage, reflecting on his own unfulfilled life and the inescapable pull of societal expectations.
Reading guide
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Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
George F. Babbitt
Babbitt is a booster, a Rotarian, a man whose house is a masterpiece of standardized comfort and whose dreams keep escaping toward a fairy child he can never name. When he refuses to join the Good Citizens' League, the city quietly closes ranks: clients drift, his partner and father-in-law panic, and he discovers that a free country has its own way of enforcing orthodoxy. His wavering between conformity and a vague, unformed hunger is the engine of the whole book.
Myra Babbitt
Myra runs the household, manages the towels, absorbs her husband's headaches and moods, and has long since stopped worrying about being seen in bulgy corsets. She is a good woman and a sexless one in Babbitt's eyes, a fixture rather than a companion, and the novel quietly measures how much of her life has been spent keeping the machinery of Floral Heights running. Her devotion, and the way it goes unnoticed, sharpens the ache at the center of Babbitt's restlessness.
Paul Riesling
Paul is the one person Babbitt can talk to without performing, and their yearly escapes together are the closest thing either man has to joy. Trapped with the shrewish Zilla, he drifts into a furtive affair with a flabby, flirtatious woman in an atrocious hat, and Babbitt watches him with a mixture of loyalty, pity, and dread. Paul's quiet desperation is the mirror in which Babbitt first sees his own.
Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt
Ted builds racers out of tin and pine, roars off on his motorcycle with Eunice perched on the rumble seat, and tells anyone who'll listen that his father doesn't know there's any fun left in the world. Yet on a Pullman to Chicago the two of them light cigars and talk man-to-man, and Babbitt warms to a companionship he'd sacrifice anything for, if only he could be sure of proper credit. Ted represents the generational crack in the Babbitt façade.
Verona Babbitt
Verona reads irregular poetry, holds forth on evolution and Kenneth Escott, and cannot decide what she wants, which Babbitt takes as a personal affront. Her earnestness and her stalled romance with the highbrow Escott exasperate a father who measures worth in speed and salesmanship. She is the household's quiet reproach to Babbitt's booster creed, though neither of them quite knows it.
Tinka Babbitt
George's youngest child, a sweet and affectionate little girl.
Conformity and Materialism
The book critiques the pressure to conform to middle-class standards, as seen in Babbitt's obsession with modern appliances, cars, and social status, and his fear of being seen as unconventional or un-American.
Midlife Crisis and Disillusionment
Babbitt experiences a profound sense of emptiness and restlessness, dreaming of escape and romance, yet feeling trapped by his family, career, and the monotonous routines of suburban life.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Characters engage in hollow rituals like spiritualism and boosterism, while Babbitt himself preaches conservative values but secretly indulges in rebellion, revealing the gap between public image and private desires.
Gender Roles and Marriage
The novel explores stifling marital dynamics, with Zilla's bitterness and Myra's domestic subservience, while Babbitt seeks validation from other women, highlighting the constraints and disappointments of traditional marriage.