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Key Elements in Sinclair Lewis', Babbitt Essay

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Sinclair Lewis, the author of Babbitt, devised several key literary elements to explain his full effect and purpose for writing his novel. Babbitt is a satirist look, at not only one man, but an entire society as well. He exposes the hypocrisy and mechanization of American society in the 1920’s. In the story Lewis focuses on his main character George Babbitt, the protagonist throughout much of the book, who is a business with lofty aims and a desire to climb the ladder of the social class. To fully achieve his opinions and beliefs, Lewis used literary effects of irony and theme. The novel begins in the 1920’s, a decade that had started in economic boom and avid consumerism, only to end crash and depression. This was a parallel used by …show more content…

By these terms George Babbitt, and many of this acquaintances are quite the bigots toward all of those who appear different than he is, especially immigrants and minorities in America. The blame should not be placed squarely on these men,s shoulders for processing such hate filled beliefs, but their own opinion of the matter is generated through the generations, that immigrants and minorities are far less superior than the “native” white men who have “always: lived in America. The irony of this subject in the book is that although men of Babbitt’s stature openly shared and joked with one another about their superiority to all other races, not one would ever admit that he was even by a small degree a bigot. Buying only the very best material items and throwing dinner parties are only a few of the ways Babbitt tried to accomplish a more noteworthy place in society and impress his peers. He is more concerned about these items than about his wife and children and to him, “God was Modern Appliances” (Lewis pg 114). However, at the end of the story, the irony is no more evident when Babbitt admits to his son that he has wasted life. He confides in his Ted that he has ruined his whole life shooting for goals which, in Babbitts lifetime, are realistically unattainable. He tells Ted that hopefully, the new generation (Ted’s generation), can recover from Babbitt’s ill fated dreams, and lead their own lives the way

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