Health and Diet Scottish Recipes Ferret for Ferrets


RE: [pf] "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis
by David A
01 December 2000 04:02 UTC

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When I was growing up my father worked in a steel mill, as did an uncle. 
My grandfather worked in a metal shop, and my other uncle drove a 
front-loader. They lived where they grew up, they worked hard, they 
stayed with the same company for years and years until the steel 
industry went belly-up in the late '70s. They played for their company 
softball teams and took their families to their company and union 
picnics. They all had 2.6 kids, their marriages that were sometimes good 
and sometimes not so good, and they had houses they struggled to pay 
for. All their friends were mostly just like them.

They didn't follow their bliss or change the world. They didn't up and 
move far away, at least until my father felt he had no choice. They 
complained about the system but didn't really fight it. They join 
political parties except to register, and they voted Democratic. If they 
had any spare time they would take a carload of kids to football 
practice, and they would rather have played pinochle over a beer than 
read Thoreau or write essays.

And you're going to come along and tell me they are all just a bunch of 
Babbitts, of automatons, of...how did you put it? Oh yeah, "an 
excessively teamplayerish person who seems incapable of expressing even 
the faintest glimmer of individuality."

I don't think so, man. 

But I'm not really interested in explaining it to you. Because if you 
can't see the individuality in all the Babbitts around you and in your 
judgemental Babbitt-self, it's not something you'd understand anyway. 
And you're plenty the poorer for it.

David