Nancy G. Ballard's Babbitt

Nancy G. Ballard’s Critical Evaluation links the setting of Zenith, the main city in Babbitt, to real life and describes the characteristics of the population as a whole in Zenith. Within her evaluation, she demonstrated that Zenith is a “typical progressive American “business city”” of the roaring twenties. She enriches the idea of the growing city by explaining the embarrassing “ramshackle witnesses of the city’s nineteenth-century origins”. With the modern city, she explains how Zenith’s culture is based on “Dollar Ethics” and the population is very democratic. In addition to money, the people are shown to be religious as well in a “Salvation and Five Percent” church with a combined cross-and-dollar-sign approach”. She compares the city's …show more content…
When I read Babbitt at first, I though he became a rebel because of his problems towards his family, himself with his satisfactions of money, and the shooting of his friend's wife. I though he lived in a rich city and was rich himself, but he had financial problems with his car and other merchandises. Furthermore, I thought he became a rebel because of the financial problem with the fact he could not get along with his family and ultimately making him rebel was his friend being shot. However, after reading Nancy’s Critical Evaluation, I now know that the money driven society caused Babbitt to stop for a moment and think about his life and how useless it is. He was just a man in a city where fashion and money are high positions, and this caused him to think, he was just one of the many like him, a real-estate that spends his life for money. I was able to notice that the society is just filled with other business men, who don’t care about affairs and morals and just want money. That is what I learned that caused Babbitt to suddenly snap when his friend shot his wife and thus, he became a