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To begin this, the final chapter of Babbitt, Lewis draws back to show you not only Babbitt but the city and country he calls home. The Good Citizens\' League has triumphed, especially in Zenith and other midwestern cities. It\'s popular not only among Babbitt and his middle-class friends, but among the very rich, who use it to keep the lower classes in their place.
NOTE: LEWIS\'S GRIM VIEW OF ZENITH AND AMERICA This is perhaps Lewis\'s grimmest, most cynical view of life in Zenith and in America. Not only has Babbitt\'s rebellion been crushed, but similar rebellions across the country are being crushed as the Good Citizen\'s League spreads. American democracy has been distorted to maintain class differences but erase difference of opinion; democracy \"did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals and vocabulary.\" Do you think this was an accurate view? And have things gotten better, or worse, since Lewis\'s day?
Babbitt stays an active member of the GCL just long enough to restore his standing as a respectable citizen. He\'s more comfortable simply resuming his old routine of Boosters\' Club meetings.
One thing that does worry him is the possibility that his fling with Tanis may have imperiled his chances to go to heaven. For that reason he asks the Reverend Drew for advice. As usual, Drew seems less a man of God than a hard-driving business executive. His eyes glisten in hopes that Babbitt will confess some exciting sin, but when Babbitt refuses to go into detail, Drew grows impatient and says he can spare only five minutes for prayer. During the prayer, smirking, unpleasant Sheldon Smeeth offers Babbitt his help, an offer so unnerving that Babbitt rushes to escape.
Slowly Babbitt finds some limited peace. He takes pleasure in his daughter\'s marriage to Kenneth Escott. And he\'s once again one of the best-liked members of the Boosters\' Club. As the club laughs at his newly revealed middle name--the \"F\" in George F. Babbitt stands for Follansbee--Babbitt \"knows that he [is] secure again and popular\" and \"that he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from the Clan of Good Fellows.\"
In business, too, he regains his lost stature: Jake Offutt wants to make his next crooked deal with the help of Babbitt-Thompson Realty. Babbitt vows that as soon as he can, he\'ll break away from Offutt and the Traction Gang, but, as so often before, he loses courage. He begins to think of the money the Traction deals have earned him, of the isolation that will come if he offends the Zenith business community a second time. Perhaps, he tells himself, he can be honest after he retires.
NOTE: BABBITT, THE SLIGHTLY CHANGED MAN Babbitt is pleased that \"the last scar of his rebellion was healed.\" Yet he isn\'t quite the same man he was at the start of the novel. Then, despite his vague unhappiness, he was blind to his faults and to the faults of Zenith. Now he sees them in all their depressing detail. He knows he should be honest but realizes he won\'t be; he admits he isn\'t strong enough to withstand Zenith\'s demands to conform. \"They\'ve licked me; licked me to a finish!\" he whimpers--and he\'s right. Do you admire Babbitt for gaining self-knowledge or do you condemn him for his weakness?
The following weekend Ted comes home from college. On Saturday night he takes Eunice Littlefield out to a dance. Early the next morning the Babbitts are horrified to find him sleeping with Eunice in his bedroom.
\"Let me introduce my wife,\" Ted announces. The scandal of the elopement brings the Littlefields, Verona and Kenneth Escott, and the Henry T. Thompsons rushing to Babbitt\'s house to proclaim the couple\'s immorality.
\"I\'m getting just about enough of being hollered at,\" Ted says. And Babbitt, perhaps surprisingly, takes his son\'s side. He leads Ted into the dining room, where he says that the Babbitt men must stick together. He doesn\'t approve of early marriages, but he does approve of Eunice and of Ted.
Ted wants to quit college and become a mechanic. Slowly, Babbitt ponders this idea. You can almost hear him thinking about the way his youthful dream--and Paul\'s and so many others\' in Zenith--were crushed. \"I\'ve never done a single thing I\'ve wanted to in my whole life,\" he tells his son.
NOTE: BABBITT\'S ENDING Lewis has given you much to laugh about in Babbitt, but he\'s also given you much to consider. George Babbitt is in many ways a comic figure, but now, at the end of the novel, he\'s also a pathetic one. His rebellion is crushed. He\'s gained self-knowledge--in that way, at least, he has grown over the course of the book--but he hasn\'t really gained courage. He knows he needs to change but he also knows he doesn\'t have the strength to change. All he can hope is that Ted will avoid making the mistakes he made--of being afraid of the family, afraid of Zenith, afraid of himself.
Given what you know of Zenith, do you think Ted will be able to fulfill his father\'s hopes? Lewis doesn\'t answer the question. For the moment, at least, Babbitt speaks loudly and optimistically to his son. \"The world is yours!\" he encourages, and the two of them march into the living room to face the rest of their family.
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