Babbit - Misunderstood?
Odd, isn't it, that George F. Babbitt should be one of the most reviled characters in American literature? What, after all, is his great crime ? It's not that he's a conformist; we're all conformists of one kind or another; such is the nature of social creatures. No, the problem with George Babbitt, that which has so incensed intellectuals for some eighty-odd years is the set of ideas that he conforms to : Middle American ideals--hard work, thrift, salesmanship, conservatism, Christianity, family values, monogamy, the whole panoply of traditional morays of which the Left is so contemptuous.
George's story is fairly simple. A successful Realtor in the booming midwestern city of Zenith, married with three children, George is a pillar of the community and a support to his family, but he's not happy. Everyone is always coming to him with their complaints about life, but he's never supposed to question his lot. Then his friend, Paul Riesling, begins to express his own dissatisfaction and together the two begin to sow some wild oats. George goes along on a trip to Maine without their wives, but eventually Paul sprints ahead by first having an affair and then shooting his wife.
George, who had tried reigning Paul in, now proceeds to have his own affair with the widow Tanis Judique. He also starts to hang out with some of Tanis's scruffy friends and to vocally question the received wisdom of Zenith's business community. But George's wife, Myra, finds out about the affair and George's business partners bail out on a few deals. Meanwhile, George discovers that Tanis, though her life seemed freer at first, is just as bound by societal conventions as he.
With his own business now suffering and the bloom off of his new romance, George is already beginning to waiver, and when Myra comes down with a potentially deadly case of appendicitis, he realizes that he wants his old life back. Myra and his friends welcome him back to the fold.
In a final scene, George's son elopes, and he surprises everyone by accepting the marriage. He even tells the boy that he should seize his opportunities now, because he (George) never truly did anything he wanted to his whole life.
Now I understand that on the surface this does seem like an indictment of middle America, but it also reads like a cautionary tale, defending Zenith and its...