The Importance Of Setting In Sinclair Lewis Babbitt
Luke Mitchell-Nelson
Summer Reading
Humans are products of their environment. It does not come as a surprise that where and when a story takes place has drastic effects on the thoughts, actions, and attitudes of the characters. A story can have distinct moods, tied directly to distinct settings. Some authors provide setting with vivid color, sound, lighting, some elect to leave much to the imagination of the reader. But without a doubt, setting plays an extremely vital role in the atmosphere of a story. The setting provided in the novel Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, provides a beautiful backdrop to the intricacies of the story. The novel has an extremely interesting mood to it, accompanied by extremely interesting ideas. Before the setting …show more content…
Zenith is a fictitious city designed by the author to represent the perfectly average American midsize city. Zenith is just beginning to blossom, with beautiful real estate and a vibrant city life. Sinclair Lewis masterfully paints the city in this sort of “mechanical”, grey, cynical, shade of monotony and conformity. Throughout the book the author references, through omnipotent third person perspective, that what many in the city take as their own sense of individuality is actually shared by many. Lewis successfully creates this sense that throughout the entire city there is a cold sense of disappointment, a sense of sameness, invisible to its …show more content…
Never is a word out of place, his meaning is always clear and exact when he means to inspire an observation about the characters or setting. His usage of language is constantly pointing out an unconscious drive for social status and appearance, slipping in notes of a boring conformity, in a way that could have just as easily gone completely unnoticed. When Babbitt puts on his best suit Lewis describes it as “well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished”, and his shoes “were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots” (9). Lewis could have just as easily simply described what Babbitt was wearing but he had to provide this nonverbal setting. He picks his words wisely, precisely, and gets his point
Summer Reading
Humans are products of their environment. It does not come as a surprise that where and when a story takes place has drastic effects on the thoughts, actions, and attitudes of the characters. A story can have distinct moods, tied directly to distinct settings. Some authors provide setting with vivid color, sound, lighting, some elect to leave much to the imagination of the reader. But without a doubt, setting plays an extremely vital role in the atmosphere of a story. The setting provided in the novel Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, provides a beautiful backdrop to the intricacies of the story. The novel has an extremely interesting mood to it, accompanied by extremely interesting ideas. Before the setting …show more content…
Zenith is a fictitious city designed by the author to represent the perfectly average American midsize city. Zenith is just beginning to blossom, with beautiful real estate and a vibrant city life. Sinclair Lewis masterfully paints the city in this sort of “mechanical”, grey, cynical, shade of monotony and conformity. Throughout the book the author references, through omnipotent third person perspective, that what many in the city take as their own sense of individuality is actually shared by many. Lewis successfully creates this sense that throughout the entire city there is a cold sense of disappointment, a sense of sameness, invisible to its …show more content…
Never is a word out of place, his meaning is always clear and exact when he means to inspire an observation about the characters or setting. His usage of language is constantly pointing out an unconscious drive for social status and appearance, slipping in notes of a boring conformity, in a way that could have just as easily gone completely unnoticed. When Babbitt puts on his best suit Lewis describes it as “well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished”, and his shoes “were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots” (9). Lewis could have just as easily simply described what Babbitt was wearing but he had to provide this nonverbal setting. He picks his words wisely, precisely, and gets his point