"Cliff Notes - Babbitt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Yet for all her education, Verona may not seem to you much different from the rest of her family or from the rest of Zenith. Her arguments with her brother are petty and childish. Instead of becoming a social worker, she takes a job as a secretary. Though in her political discussions with her fiance, reporter Kenneth Escott, she calls herself a radical, her ideas are only slightly more liberal than Babbitt's. And at the end of the novel, when Ted has eloped with Eunice Littlefield, the now-married Verona strongly disapproves. What can you conclude about Verona when you see she's become such a staunch defender of Zenith's values?

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: SENECA DOANE

This lawyer and reformer (whose first name comes from a noble Roman statesman) is perhaps the one person in Babbitt who makes an intelligent, persistent rebellion against the forces of corruption and conformity in Zenith. He runs, unsuccessfully, for mayor; he supports striking workers; he tries to aid a minister condemned for his liberal views. In a way, Doane and Babbitt have switched places in life. When they were in college together, Babbitt had wanted to become a lawyer who helped the poor, and Doane had wanted to become rich. Babbitt gave up his dream to chase business success, and Doane gave up a lucrative career in corporate law to work with labor unions and other reform movements. What point do you think Lewis was making with the Babbitt/Doane reversal? Is it to show how youthful dreams can change?

Doane understands Zenith more clearly than does any other person in the novel. In fact, Lewis uses Doane to voice many of his own thoughts about the city. Zenith is to be admired for its economic efficiency and for the comfortable life of its middle class, but condemned for its crooked politics and for the conformity it demands.

T. CHOLMONDELEY FRINK

One of Lewis's funniest creations is this poet and advertising "genius" known to his friends as "Chum." Frink, the author of "Poemulations," a newspaper idea column, and "Ads that Add" is Zenith's idea of a great writer. His writing is, of course, terrible, and Lewis has a great deal of fun showing just how bad his work really is. Verses like "I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed and wunk" are all the evidence we need of the low level of literature in Zenith.

Yet Frink, like so many others in Babbitt, may win at least a little sympathy from you because he is a victim of failed dreams. One foggy night Babbitt observes Frink staggering drunkenly down the street. "I'm a traitor to poetry," Frink shouts--and it's the truth. He thinks he could have been a serious writer; instead he sold his talents to the highest bidder. It's a sadly common fate in Zenith.

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: VERGIL GUNCH

Vergil Gunch, coal dealer, president of the Boosters' Club and potential Exalted Ruler of the Elks, is at the start of Babbitt everything Babbitt himself would like to be. Gunch is Babbitt at his most extreme--loud, full of jokes, financially successful--but he is not plagued by any of the doubts that burden Babbitt. But because those doubts make Babbitt in many ways a sympathetic character, without them Gunch is in many ways a monster. Once Babbitt begins to rebel against Zenith by supporting Seneca Doane and by having an affair with Tanis Judique, it's Gunch he most fears. And for good reason--Gunch is always whispering about him, spying on him. Gunch's ugly name signals his moral ugliness.

Gunch does have his good side, as Zenith has its good side. His hospital visits to the ailing Mrs. Babbitt show that friendliness does exist in Zenith, and that it can be a comfort. But Lewis never lets us forget that Gunch's friendliness is basically shallow, because it extends only to people who are exactly like himself. Gunch represents Zenith at its meanest. When at the end of the book Babbitt once again becomes his friend, it's another token of Babbitt's final defeat.

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: TANIS JUDIQUE

A pretty, elegantly dressed widow of not-quite middle age, Tanis Judique enters Babbitt's life when she comes to look for an apartment. Babbitt is immediately attracted to her, but not until he makes an unsuccessful pass at a young manicurist, and fails as a political rebel, does he take the enormous--and in Zenith, dangerous--step of having an affair.

Compared to Babbitt, Tanis is cultured and well educated. But in some ways she isn't that superior to the rest of Zenith. She snobbishly hopes that Babbitt belongs to the elite Union Club. Her friends, who call themselves "The Bunch," like to believe they're brave rebels against Zenith society, but in fact they're as flighty and thoughtless, and probably as foolish, as any member of the Booster's Club.

Eventually, Babbitt begins to think of Tanis as dull and unattractive, little better than his wife, and he breaks off the affair. When, in a moment of desperation, he returns to see her, she is cool and distant toward him.

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: ZILLA RIESLING

Zilla Riesling, Paul Riesling's wife, is another of the unhappy, would-be rebels in Babbitt. An intelligent, witty woman, she sees Zenith for the dull, conformist place it is and isn't afraid to say so. Yet just as her husband Paul's insight becomes self-pity, Zilla's becomes bitterness. She and Paul turn on each other, making their lives more miserable than they already were.

Paul first deals with Zilla by having an affair; then, enraged, he shoots her. She survives, but when some months later Babbitt visits her, she's a changed woman. Once blowsy, though lively, and attractive, she's now "bloodless and aged," and "dreadfully still." She's become a devout follower of the Pentecostal Communion Faith, but religion, far from teaching her Christian charity, has only increased her bitterness. She claims she's found peace, but Babbitt gives an accurate analysis: "Well, if that's what you call being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?"

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: PAUL RIESLING

Paul Riesling is Babbitt's best--perhaps his only true--friend. In some ways, he's the most extreme example of the damage Zenith inflicts on its citizens, of the crippling disappointments they suffer when their personal dreams are sacrificed to Zenith's demands for commercial success. Once a promising violinist, Riesling had hoped to study music in Europe. Instead, he's a roofing manufacturer, unhappily married, playing his violin only for friends.

Riesling is one of the most intelligent characters in the novel. His thoughts about Zenith--that it is a place of cutthroat competition and conformity, where one-third of the people are openly miserable and another third secretly unhappy--are similar to Lewis's own views. Still, some readers have found him an unsympathetic character in some ways. Paul blames his wife, Zilla, for all his suffering and seems to ignore the fact that he has made her suffer too. When at last his rage and depression lead him to shoot Zilla, he realizes too late she deserved his understanding more than his anger. Intelligent critic of Zenith, or self-pitying weakling? Victim or criminal? How do you see Paul?

After Paul is sent to prison he virtually disappears from the novel. With him goes the one relationship Babbitt truly valued. That loss sets the stage for Babbitt's own open rebellion.


^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: MAY ARNOLD

May Arnold is a middle-aged widow with whom Paul Riesling is having an affair. Babbitt sees the pair together in Chicago.

^^^^^^^^^^BABBITT: KATHARINE "TINKA" BABBITT

Tinka is Babbitt's ten-year-old daughter. Because she's too young to have been spoiled by life in Zenith, she gives Babbitt comfort when the rest of his family irritates him.