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Babbitt is deeply proud of being modern. As he leads a client through a run-down tenement, he discourses on the wonders of modern technology. But his impressive-sounding talk is just talk--Babbitt has no real understanding of the machines he worships. In his confident ignorance, Babbitt may seem like people you know. How many times have you heard people brag about their stereos or automobiles without having the slightest real knowledge of the engineering behind such products?
Babbitt picks up his father-in-law and partner, Henry T. Thompson, and drives with him to see Noel Ryland of Zeeco Motors. Babbitt thinks of Thompson as a human antique, lacking Babbitt\'s education and refinement. But Babbitt also looks down on Ryland, who possesses more education, more refinement. Why do you think that is? Is insecurity the cause of Babbitt\'s--and Zenith\'s--demand for conformity?
Back at the office, Stan Graff, one of Babbitt\'s salesmen, asks for an increase in his commissions, which Babbitt refuses. Afterwards, Babbitt can hear Graff grumbling to the other employees, and grows disturbed. This is another sign of his essential insecurity: more than anything else, he wants everyone to like him.
At dinner he talks about buying a new automobile, giving rise to a family argument over what he should buy. In Zenith, Lewis says, cars are the chief way you can tell a person\'s rank in society. (Do you think that\'s still true?) When Babbitt, irritated by the discussion, says he won\'t be buying any car until next year, the conversation falls apart.
After dinner, Mrs. Babbitt settles down to darning socks, Babbitt to reading the newspaper comics, and Ted to doing his homework--geometry, the Latin poet Cicero, and the poem Comus by the great seventeenth-century English poet John Milton. Ted\'s homework gives Lewis a chance to satirize education in Zenith, and much of his satire still hits home today. The Babbitts have little use for real education. Cicero, Shakespeare, and Milton are among the greatest poets the world has produced, but to Ted they\'re dead and irrelevant because they won\'t make money for him. The genteel Mrs. Babbitt dislikes Shakespeare (whom she hasn\'t read) because she\'s heard he isn\'t nice. As for Babbitt, though he defends Shakespeare, he doesn\'t value literature any more than his wife or son do; it\'s just a necessary requirement to enter college.
Ted sees a shortcut to success through correspondence schools, and Lewis displays his gift for hilarious parody as Ted brings out the school advertisements he\'s collected. In one, the traditional symbols of learning--the lamp, the torch, Minerva (the Greek goddess of wisdom)--have been replaced by the symbol worshipped by Zenith--the dollar sign.
Babbitt doesn\'t know what to say at first, because no one has told him what to think about correspondence courses. They\'ve apparently become a big business, and big business always impresses Babbitt. Still, because a degree from a regular college is necessary for business success, Ted must go to a regular college. Ted finally agrees.
NOTE: BABBITT AND EDUCATION As Ted and Babbitt wrangle over the value of correspondence schools, we see Lewis satirizing American attitudes about education that still exist today. Ted wants school to teach him immediately practical skills. Babbitt wants his son to take more traditional liberal arts courses--not because he thinks education has any real value in itself, but because it\'s a status symbol necessary to business success in Zenith. Lewis finds both attitudes narrow-minded, materialistic. You may want to ask yourself: How much have things changed? Do most students today see education as a road to wisdom or to wealth? What are your goals? How will education help you achieve them?
When Ted abandons his homework to go out driving, Mrs. Babbitt tells her husband it\'s time he instruct Ted about sex. Babbitt agrees to explain the importance of leading a \"strongly moral life.\" (You\'ll see later just how moral Babbitt\'s life is.) Then Babbitt walks out on the porch and broods. Despite his son, his family, his good day at the office, he feels restless. He remembers when he dreamed of being a lawyer, and his friend Paul dreamed of being a violinist. The dreams don\'t last: Paul loses his when he marries Zilla Coolbeck, and Babbitt gives up his when he marries Myra Thompson. Most people in Zenith would call the Babbitts\' marriage a good one, but as Lewis describes it, we see it lacks any passion. Yet in his depression Babbitt feels a rare moment of sympathy for his wife. \"Poor kid, she hasn\'t had much better time than I have,\" he thinks. On returning to the living room he smoothes her hair, making her happy and rather surprised, giving us a reminder that he isn\'t an entirely insensitive man.
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