Character guide

George F. Babbitt

major

Also known as Babbitt, Georgie Babbitt, Mr. Babbitt, George Follansbee 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

major

Also known as Mrs. Babbitt, Myra Thompson

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

major

Also known as Paul, Riesling, Mr. 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

supporting

Also known as Ted, Ted Babbitt, Little Theodore

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

supporting

Also known as Verona

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

minor

Also known as Tinka

George's youngest child, a sweet and affectionate little girl.

Zilla Riesling

supporting

Also known as Zilla, Mrs. Riesling, Zilla Colbeck

Zilla is the domestic weather Paul cannot escape, a woman whose complaints have become the texture of their marriage and whose presence explains why Paul clings to Babbitt's friendship like a lifeline. She is not a villain so much as a force of attrition, and her scenes with Paul reveal how ordinary unhappiness can grind a sensitive man into furtive consolations. Her marriage is the cautionary version of the Babbitts' own.

Tanis Judique

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Judique, Tanis

Tanis Judique enters Babbitt's life as the sympathetic, faintly bohemian woman who seems to understand the restless man Myra no longer reaches. She is patient and strategic in her loneliness: a note on refined stationery, a message left with Miss McGoun, a soft insistence that she is ambitious for him. Her neediness both flatters and entraps Babbitt, and the tug between wanting her and resenting the demand she makes on him becomes the engine of his middle-book rebellion.

Chum Frink

supporting

Also known as Frink, T. Cholmondeley Frink, Mr. Frink

Frink belongs to Babbitt's club-and-Booster world, one of the men whose approval Babbitt measures himself against at the Roughnecks' Table. He is a professional optimist, a versifier whose rhymes and advertising jingles give the city its self-satisfied music, and his easy fellowship with Babbitt reveals how thoroughly commerce and culture have merged in Zenith. His presence sharpens the novel's satire of a business civilization that mistakes slogans for art.

Virgil Gunch

supporting

Also known as Gunch, Verg Gunch, Mr. Gunch

Gunch is Babbitt's fellow Roughneck and Athletic Club crony, a backslapping man whose opinions arrive with the force of a sales pitch. When Babbitt balks at joining the Good Citizens' League, Gunch's cold shoulder becomes one of the first signs that the city's powerful men are closing ranks against him. His easy camaraderie and quicker contempt embody the conformist pressure that shapes Babbitt's wavering middle chapters.

Howard Littlefield

supporting

Also known as Littlefield, Dr. Howard Littlefield

Dr. Howard Littlefield is the Floral Heights neighbor whose bottomless fund of facts makes him the neighborhood oracle and a fixture at the Babbitt dinner table. He is pompous, humorless, and utterly confident in the received wisdom of the age, and his daughter Eunice's teasing affection for Babbitt exposes the gap between Littlefield's windy expertise and any real warmth. He stands as the novel's portrait of respectable, well-informed mediocrity.

Seneca Doane

supporting

Also known as Doane, Mr. Seneca Doane, Senny Doane

Seneca Doane was once Babbitt's classmate and a promising corporation counsel before he turned to farmer-labor tickets and socialist friends, and Zenith's boosters now cite him as a cautionary example. Meeting him on the train, Babbitt expects a fanatic and finds instead a gentle, book-reading man who likes dancing and pretty women and remembers the liberal boy Babbitt used to be. Doane's unassuming decency gives Babbitt a mirror for his own abandoned ideals and quietly indicts the conformity he has settled into.

Stanley Graff

minor

Also known as Stan Graff, Graff, Young Graff

A young, ambitious salesman in Babbitt's real estate office.

Louetta Swanson

minor

Also known as Mrs. Swanson, Louetta Swanson

A flirtatious society woman and friend of the Babbitts.

Eddie Swanson

minor

Also known as Swanson, Eddie

Louetta's husband, a car salesman and Babbitt's acquaintance.

Sir Gerald Doak

minor

Also known as Sir Gerald, Doak, Gerald Doak

An English visitor to Zenith who befriends Babbitt during his rebellious period.

Kenneth Escott

supporting

Also known as Escott, Ken, Ken Escott

Ken Escott is the young journalist who has attached himself to Verona, and to Ted and Babbitt he is a puzzle: a nice enough lad who smokes too much and cannot seem to get to the point. He belongs to the earnest, bookish younger generation that the Babbitt men regard with affectionate exasperation, and his courtship of Verona becomes a running family joke about pep, speed, and responsibility. He matters as a measure of the generational distance inside the Babbitt household.

Theresa McGoun

minor

Also known as Miss McGoun, McGoun

Babbitt's efficient and loyal secretary at the real estate office.

Charley McKelvey

minor

Also known as McKelvey, Charles McKelvey, Mrs. Charles McKelvey

A wealthy contractor and social climber in Zenith's elite circle.

Verg Gunch

minor

Also known as Verg, Gunch

A variant name for Virgil Gunch, used in club contexts.

Dr. A. I. Dilling

minor

Also known as Dr. Dilling, Dilling

A physician and member of Babbitt's social set.

William Washington Eathorne

minor

Also known as Eathorne, Mr. Eathorne

An elderly, conservative banker and pillar of Zenith society.

Carrie Nork

minor

Also known as Carrie, Mrs. Carrie Nork

A friend of Myra Babbitt, part of the women's social circle.

Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew

minor

Also known as Dr. Drew, Reverend Drew, Doc Drew

The pastor of Babbitt's church, a popular and conventional preacher.

Orville Jones

minor

Also known as Jones, Mr. Jones, Orvy

A fellow member of the Boosters' Club and Babbitt's acquaintance.

Sidney Finkelstein

minor

Also known as Sid, Finkelstein, Mr. Finkelstein

A Jewish tailor and member of the Boosters' Club.

Henry T. Thompson

minor

Also known as Henry Thompson, Hank, Old Henry T.

Myra's father and Babbitt's former business partner.

Joe Paradise

minor

Also known as Joe

A guide at the Maine camp where Babbitt vacations with Paul.

Sheldon Smeeth

minor

Also known as Smeeth, young Mr. Smeeth

A pious young man active in the church and Sunday school.

Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey

minor

Also known as Professor Pumphrey, Joe Pumphrey, Pumphrey

A pompous elocution teacher and member of the Boosters.

Pete Menutti

minor

Also known as Pete, young Pete

A young man in Babbitt's office, later involved in a scandal.

Ida Putiak

minor

Also known as Ida, Miss Ida Putiak

A manicurist at the hotel where Babbitt briefly flirts with her.

Jake Offutt

minor

Also known as Offutt, Jake, Jacob

A shady political fixer and acquaintance of Babbitt.

Cecil Rountree

minor

Also known as Rountree

A young architect and member of the progressive set.

Clarence Drum

minor

Also known as Drum, Captain Clarence Drum, Mr. Drum

A police captain and member of the Boosters' Club.

Colonel Rutherford Snow

minor

Also known as Rutherford Snow, Colonel Snow

The elderly owner of the Zenith Advocate-Times newspaper.

Conrad Lyte

minor

Also known as Lyte, Mr. Conrad Lyte, Brother Lyte

A real estate client and fellow church member of Babbitt.

Chester Kirby Laylock

minor

Also known as Chet Laylock, Laylock, Chet

A young real estate salesman in Babbitt's office.

Dr. Earl Patten

minor

Also known as Dr. Patten, Patten

A physician and friend of Babbitt's social circle.

Willis Ijams

minor

Also known as Ijams, President Ijams, Brother Ijams

President of the Boosters' Club and a local businessman.

Archibald Purdy

minor

Also known as Purdy, Brother Purdy

A fellow church member and acquaintance of Babbitt.

Max Kruger

minor

Also known as Max, Maxwell

A businessman and member of the Boosters' Club.

Beecher Ingram

minor

Also known as Ingram, poor Beecher Ingram

A young man who commits suicide, shocking the community.

Sam Doppelbrau

minor

Also known as Doppelbrau, Mr. Samuel Doppelbrau, Sam

A brewer and member of Babbitt's social circle.

Fulton Bemis

minor

Also known as Bemis, Fulton

A wealthy eccentric and member of the elite set.

Wilberta Bannigan

minor

Also known as Miss Bannigan

A stenographer in Babbitt's office.

Elbert Wing

minor

Also known as Wing, El Wing, Elbert

A young lawyer and friend of Kenneth Escott.

Lucas Prout

minor

Also known as Mr. Prout, Prout, the Hon. Lucas Prout

A politician and candidate for mayor of Zenith.

Chan Mott

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Miriam Sassburger

minor

Also known as Miriam, Mrs. Sassburger

A society woman and acquaintance of the Babbitts.

Sylvester Moon

minor

Also known as Moon

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Horace Updike

minor

Also known as Updike

An architect and member of the elite set.

May Arnold

minor

Also known as Arnold, Mrs. Arnold

A society woman and acquaintance of the Babbitts.

Healey Hanson

minor

Also known as Hanson, Mr. Hanson

A real estate competitor of Babbitt's in Zenith.

Minnie Sonntag

minor

Also known as Miss Sonntag, Miss Minnie Sonntag

A former stenographer of Babbitt's, now a society woman.

Mike Monday

minor

Also known as Mike, Mr. Monday

A traveling evangelist who holds a revival in Zenith.

Dr. Kurt Yavitch

minor

Also known as Dr. Yavitch, Kurt

A physician and acquaintance of Babbitt.

Fritz Weilinger

minor

Also known as Young Fritz

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Lord Wycombe

minor

Also known as Wycombe

An English aristocrat visiting Zenith.

Noel Ryland

minor

Also known as Ryland

A member of the progressive set in Zenith.

Howat Penny

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Cabe Nixon

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Dora Gibson Tucker

minor

Also known as Dotty

A friend of Myra Babbitt.

Elnora Pearl Bates

minor

Also known as Miss Elnora Pearl Bates

A young woman in Babbitt's social circle.

Omar Gribble

minor

Also known as Gribble

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Ben Berkey

minor

Also known as Benny, Berkey

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Dr. J. T. Angus

minor

Also known as Dr. Angus, Angus

A physician and acquaintance of Babbitt.

George Follansbee

minor

Also known as Follansbee

A variant name for George F. Babbitt, used in formal contexts.

Alvin Thayer

minor

Also known as Thayer

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Gil O'Hearn

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Mona Dodsworth

minor

A young woman in Babbitt's social orbit.

C. Harold Lowden

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Emil Wengert

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Mack Harker

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social circle.

Bob Bickerstaff

minor

A young man in Babbitt's social orbit.

Muriel Frink

minor

Chum Frink's wife, a society woman.