Babbitt · Chapter
XI explained
Babbitt attends a burlesque show and a night of heavy drinking with other delegates during a convention.
What happens
Babbitt attends a burlesque show and a night of heavy drinking with other delegates during a convention. He dances with a professional girl, sings, quarrels, and visits a red-light district, experiencing a mix of exhilaration and shame. The episode remains secret from his family and Zenith acquaintances.
Themes in this chapter
Rebellion and Conformity
Babbitt's secret night of drinking and debauchery represents a brief rebellion against his conventional life, but he returns to shamefaced contentment and keeps the episode hidden.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Babbitt boasts about Zenith's vice dens to defend his city's reputation, yet he is ashamed of his own participation and keeps the night secret.
Characters to notice
- George F. Babbitt
Attends burlesque show, drinks heavily, dances, sings, quarrels, and visits a red-light district, feeling both rebellion and shame.
- Elbert Wing
One of the few from Zenith who knows about Babbitt's excursion.
Key passages
“Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of Jews.”
They sat in a theater box, smoking cigars and watching a burlesque show where older women danced and a comedian told anti-Semitic jokes.
Describes the crude entertainment and casual bigotry of the era.
“He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.”
Drunk on illegal liquor, Babbitt was disoriented but captivated by the young dancer's warmth.
Highlights Babbitt's intoxication and fleeting desire for escape.
“He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since college.”
When he realized he was being mocked, he wanted to fight but instead gave in to sordid experiences reminiscent of his college days.
Shows Babbitt's regression to youthful indiscretions and his inability to resist peer pressure.
“Babbitt’s excursion was never known to his family, nor to anyone in Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.”
Babbitt's night of debauchery remained a secret from his family and most acquaintances, and he himself refused to acknowledge it, as if it never happened.
Emphasizes the theme of hypocrisy and the suppression of rebellious impulses.