The Green caldron - University Library

December, 1958 17
"Aw, he probably stole it," explained my brother. '*C'mon, let's go home."
Supper was delicious that night—or so Mom and Dad told us. We
didn't get any. News of our episode had preceded us in the form of a very
curt, very irate note, dispatched shortly after our exodus. We didn't forget
the spanking, but neither did we forget the episode nor the great Mr. Sinclair
Lewis.
It wasn't many years later that I was old enough to read Mr. Sinclair
Lewis' books. Main Street and Babbitt became favorites. Then one winter
I accompanied Dad on a business trip to Sauk Center, Minnesota. The two
of us had dinner with the postmaster, a handsome old gentleman of sixty-
five who had made Sauk Center his home all his life.
"Dad, this is Gopher Prairie isn't it?" I asked during the course of
the meal. "These are Lewis' people!"
Dad said, "This is Lewis' country, yes, but I don't suppose he is too
popular here."
The postmaster laughed and added, "Nope, we don't think too much
of that Lewis fellow around here." I remembered once thinking that too.
IN
Modern Babbitts — Trained by
Fraternities
Anonymous
Rhetoric 101, Theme 2
BABBITT SINCLAIR LEWIS CREATED A CHARACTER SO
representative of a particular type of person that the name of the charac-
ter Babbitt is now recognized as a noun in Webster's Nezv Collegiate
Dictionary. "Babbitt" is defined as "a business or professional man who
adheres to the social and ethical standards of his group." Although the birth
of a Babbitt can begin anywhere, it is most likely to begin at college, where
a person is thrown into a new situation and feels the need to conform in
order to be secure and to be accepted. Joining a fraternity in college further
precipitates conformity, for fraternity pledge training often results in the
molding of modern Babbitts, men who are conformists.
Conformity results because pledge training is designed to fashion a
pledge into a shape his fraternity feels is desirable. The first step in the
pledge program is to degrade the pledges. When a pledge loses his natural
esteem for himself, he becomes more willing to be molded into the fraternity's
concept of the ideal member. By subjecting a pledge to hardships, the
fraternity is able to humble him. One such hardship is the prevention of sleep.