I
All the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about business. He was going to have more "interests"—theaters, public affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to stop smoking.
He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar–case out of the smoking–compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided, "Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will–power." He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn't know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. "Say, uh, George, have you got a—" The porter looked patient. "Have you got a time–table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub.
Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his office–work to keep it remembered. II
Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No sense a man's working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team."
He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by yelling "Attaboy!" and "Rotten!" He performed the rite scrupulously. He wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised on watching the Advocate–Times bulletin–board. He stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!" and hastened back to the office.
He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't, in twenty–five years, himself played any baseball except back–lot catch with Ted—very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides–taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of sport."
As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in Six Days—You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve–yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.
Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling. III
Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle.
In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt's was the Outing Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray–shingled building with a broad porch, on a daisy–starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey, Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn't hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in town—just as good at joshing as the men—but at the Tonawanda there's nothing but these would–be's in New York get–ups, drinking tea! Too much dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they—I wouldn't join it on a bet!"
When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his tobacco–fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors. IV
At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies. Their favorite motion–picture theater was the Chateau, which held three thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm, or a Four–alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with crown–embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries, parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns.
With exclamations of "Well, by golly!" and "You got to go some to beat this dump!" Babbitt admired the Chateau. As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild perfume and chewing–gum, he felt as when he had first seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there was in it.
He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist–eyed sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in which handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as the drawing–rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred, or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to.
All his relaxations—baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long talks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old English Chop House—were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering a year of such activity as he had never known.
背景介绍和作者简介
以上摘录出自辛克莱·刘易斯所著的《巴比特》，他是美国极具影响力的作家，也是第一位获得1930年诺贝尔文学奖的美国作家。《巴比特》于1922年出版，是一部讽刺小说，批判了20世纪初的美国中产阶级社会。故事围绕着乔治·F·巴比特展开，他是一位房地产经纪人，居住在虚构的城市泽尼斯，他体现了咆哮的二十年代美国中产阶级的价值观、习惯和矛盾。
辛克莱·刘易斯创作《巴比特》是为了揭露中产阶级生活的空虚和从众心理，突出了顺应社会规范的压力、对物质成功的痴迷以及在社会期望之外寻找个人意义的挣扎。这部小说是对消费主义、社会地位和对美国梦的追求的尖锐的社会评论。
详细解读和意义
这段文字揭示了巴比特的内心冲突以及他试图通过养成新习惯和兴趣来改变生活的尝试。他试图戒烟，通过阅读和参加戏剧来变得更有文化，并参与棒球和高尔夫等爱好。然而，他的努力是肤浅和短暂的，反映了他对真正自我提升和社会从众之间的挣扎。
巴比特的角色代表了个人主义和社会压力之间的紧张关系。他戒烟的愿望象征着对自控和道德提升的渴望，但他的复发表明摆脱根深蒂固的习惯是多么困难。他参与棒球和乡村俱乐部说明了社会活动如何经常作为确认个人地位的仪式，而不是真正的激情。
小说批判了这种追求的空虚，因为它们缺乏真实的个人意义。巴比特的生活以持续的“忙碌”为标志，他疯狂地赶着保持外表并维持他的社会地位。这个主题在今天仍然具有现实意义，因为许多人都在努力平衡个人成就与社会期望。
给学生的经验教训和见解
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理解社会压力和身份： 巴比特的故事帮助学生认识到社会压力如何影响行为和身份。它鼓励反思我们的行为有多少是真正属于我们自己的，有多少是受到融入或给他人留下深刻印象的愿望所塑造的。
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改变的挑战： 巴比特反复尝试和未能改变吸烟等习惯，这告诉我们，个人成长是一个困难的过程，需要的不只是意志力——它需要真正的动力和支持。
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真实性的价值： 这部小说邀请读者质疑肤浅的成功，并在他们的兴趣和人际关系中寻求更深层次的意义，而不是仅仅追随潮流或社会期望。
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生活的平衡： 巴比特的疯狂“忙碌”警告了过度工作和忽视个人福祉的危险。学生们可以学习平衡工作、休闲和自我关怀的重要性。
在日常生活中应用
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在学习中： 学生们可以通过为自我提升设定现实的目标，并理解改变需要时间和毅力来应用巴比特的经验。他们应该寻求真正的兴趣，而不是仅仅追随同伴。
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在社交场合： 认识到社会压力可以帮助学生做出独立的决定，并抵制盲目地顺从群体行为。培养自我意识有助于建立自信和真实性。
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在个人习惯中： 巴比特戒烟的挣扎与年轻人面临的许多习惯或成瘾挑战相似。学习自律和寻求支持至关重要。
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在时间管理中： 小说中对持续忙碌的描述鼓励学生明智地管理他们的时间，避免倦怠，并优先考虑滋养身心的活动。
从故事中培养积极的品质
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自我反思： 鼓励学生反思他们的价值观和行动背后的动机，培养更深层次的自我理解。
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毅力： 强调在克服挑战时坚持不懈的重要性，因为改变很少在一夜之间发生。
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批判性思维： 使用这个故事来培养对社会规范和成功意义的批判性思维。
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同情心： 理解巴比特的内心冲突可以帮助学生对面临类似挣扎的其他人产生同情心。
结论
辛克莱·刘易斯的《巴比特》提供了对中产阶级生活以及人类对意义和归属感的渴望的丰富探索。对于年轻读者来说，它提供了关于个性、社会影响和追求真正幸福的宝贵经验教训。通过研究巴比特的经历，学生们可以深入了解自己的生活，并学会以更大的意识和正直来驾驭社会的复杂性。
