Babbitt: A Novel of Initiation

Abstract

The masterpiece of Sinclair Lewis Babbitt was the first novel in America that won the Nobel Prize. Although there are already a large amount of studies on the novel, most of them focused on the commercial culture it reflects. From the perspectives of archetype theory and initiation story, this paper makes its concentration on the protagonist Babbitt, analyzing the five stages of the initiation progress of Babbitt from ignorance to maturity. In doing so, this paper attempts to resolve the controversial problem aroused by the characterization of Babbitt.