Babbit Essay Research Paper Essay on BabbittIt — страница 2

in favor of prohibition, but they love to drink. George calls for business ethics and even fires a man for shady business dealings. This, right after he takes a kick back and illegal information. They all claim to lead a moral life yet visit a brothel. This is the same hypocracy that goes on today with supposedly respected people. In the 1920 s president Harding was supposed to be a respected person yet had numerous scandals. The same thing has happened with our president today. Clinton should be an example but instead commits immoral acts in the White House. It would appear that if both presidents of both times did the same things, hypocracy among respected people is a common thing. Babbit is very concerned with his social standing in his town. He tries to make friends with the

wealthy people of Zenith just to improve his social standing. He first tries to befriend the Mckelveys and when that doesn t work he moves on to another rich family, the Overbrooks. In this town social standing is so important that people will abandon old friends for new rich ones. As in Zenith, there are people now will also turn on their friends if it will help them move up in the social order in our class structure. This was happening back in the 1920 s, so it s nothing new. People would try to portray themselves as a higher social standing by any means. Another common theme of society in Zenith is a lack of culture. People are more concerned with reading common poetry that is in all actuality garbage than in reading classics. A person who writes advertisement jingles is

considered a poet. Back in the 20 s there was more of a lack of culture than now. People couldn t be bothered to concern themselves with it. Presently culture has become more popular but it would be a pretty safe bet that you wouldn t have to go to far to find a person that doesn t know what the Mona Lisa is. Though this is very sad that things like this are not held in high regard in and of these societies, it is the truth. Now the final bit of social commentary Lewis gives is in showing that organized religion is becoming corrupt. Over the course of the story you can tell this by the things people related to the church to do. A preacher, Mike Monday, is brought in to help fight labor unions. The local Reverend runs his church like a business. He even commissions George to find

a way to raise Sunday school attendance. George,s advice consists of tuning away from normal religious practices in favor or running it like a business. This kind f practice has been around since the middle ages so obviously it was done in the 1920 s and is still done today. Times may have changed since the 1920 s but religion still has business practices, which in some cases over shadow the real purpose of religion. There are many societal values that are criticized by Lewis Sinclair in Babbitt that still are issues today. It is not difficult to compare these issues with what is important in society today, at least to some extent. The context with regard to everyday life may have changed, but the main themes of hypocrisy, obsession with status and possessions, ignorance of

culture, corruption of religion, intolerance of that which is different and a basic failure in personal relationships still remain today. 314