Middle-Class Criticism and Babbitt's Transformation

Lewis' Babbitt genuinely portrays the prevalent 1920s themes of: the middle- class, the American Dream, and escapism. The novel's main character Babbitt undergoes a complete transformation where he is no longer a shallow and intolerant conservative, but an understanding and free-thinking liberal. "In the end one discovers he is only weak-not malicious, illiberal, ungenerous, and fascistic, but sentimental and basically decent." (Hoffman 413). Babbitt, a member of the middle-class is blinded by greed for material desires, and his true happiness remains unfulfilled despite him having achieved the goal of the American Dream. Babbitt lives in a capitalistic state of superficial bliss where success is determined by the property one owns and the money one makes. Ultimately, Babbitt is able to rise against his bourgeois surroundings, combat his weaknesses, and become a stronger, and more fulfilled being.

Babbitt and other Zenithites are too concerned with earning a lot of money, owning property, while lacking humanist desires to help the poor. Narcissistic and greedy, the Zenithites only care to inflate their wallets and their egos. Little value, if any, is given to the lower-class, and social programs are viewed with contempt by the middle- class. When Verona explains to her father that she would like to work for charities and do meaningful work, her father quickly dismisses those ideals as absurd and communist-like. "Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism." (Lewis 14) Business is fully embraced, while philanthropy and the welfare of others is rejected.