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.
背景介紹與作者介紹
以上摘錄自辛克萊·路易斯所著的《巴比特》，辛克萊·路易斯是一位有影響力的美國作家，也是第一位獲得1930年諾貝爾文學獎的美國作家。《巴比特》於1922年出版，是一部諷刺小說，批判了20世紀初美國中產階級社會。故事圍繞著喬治·F·巴比特展開，他是一位居住在虛構城市澤尼斯的房地產經紀人，體現了咆哮的二十年代美國中產階級的價值觀、習慣和矛盾。
辛克萊·路易斯寫《巴比特》是為了揭露中產階級生活的空虛和墨守成規，突出了屈從社會規範的壓力、對物質成功的痴迷，以及在社會期望之外尋找個人意義的掙扎。這部小說是對消費主義、社會地位和對美國夢的追求的尖銳的社會評論。
詳細闡釋與意義
這段文字揭示了巴比特的內心衝突，以及他試圖通過養成新習慣和興趣來改變生活的嘗試。他試圖戒菸，通過閱讀和參加戲劇來變得更有文化，並參與棒球和高爾夫等愛好。然而，他的努力是膚淺且短暫的，反映了他真誠的自我提升與社會 conform 的鬥爭。
巴比特的角色代表了個性和社會壓力之間的緊張關係。他想戒菸的願望象徵著對自控和道德提升的渴望，但他的復發表明擺脫根深蒂固的習慣是多麼困難。他參與棒球和鄉村俱樂部，說明了社會活動如何經常作為肯定自己地位的儀式，而不是真正的熱情。
這部小說批判了這種追求的空洞性，因為它們缺乏真實的個人意義。巴比特的生活以不斷的「忙碌」為標誌，他瘋狂地趕著保持外表和維持他的社會地位。這個主題至今仍然具有現實意義，因為許多人都在努力平衡個人成就與社會期望。
給學生的教訓和見解
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理解社會壓力與身份： 巴比特的故事幫助學生認識到社會壓力如何影響行為和身份。它鼓勵反思我們的行為有多少是真正屬於我們自己的，有多少是受到融入或給他人留下深刻印象的願望所塑造的。
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改變的挑戰： 巴比特反覆嘗試和未能改變吸煙等習慣，教導我們個人成長是一個艱難的過程，需要的不僅僅是意志力——它需要真正的動力和支持。
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真實的價值： 這部小說邀請讀者質疑膚淺的成功，並在他們的興趣和人際關係中尋求更深層次的意義，而不是僅僅追隨潮流或社會期望。
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生活的平衡： 巴比特瘋狂的「忙碌」警告人們過度工作和忽視個人福祉的危險。學生可以學習平衡工作、休閒和自我照顧的重要性。
在日常生活中應用
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在學習中： 學生可以通過為自我提升設定切實可行的目標，並理解改變需要時間和毅力來應用巴比特的經驗。他們應該尋求真正的興趣，而不是簡單地追隨同伴。
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在社交場合： 認識到社會壓力可以幫助學生做出獨立的決定，並抵制盲目地 conform 於群體行為。培養自我意識有助於建立自信和真實性。
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在個人習慣中： 巴比特戒菸的掙扎與年輕人面臨的許多習慣或成癮挑戰相似。學習自律和尋求支持至關重要。
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在時間管理中： 這部小說對不斷忙碌的描繪鼓勵學生明智地管理他們的時間，避免倦怠，並優先考慮滋養身心的活動。
從故事中培養積極的品質
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自我反思： 鼓勵學生反思他們的價值觀和他們行為背後的動機，培養更深層次的自我理解。
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毅力： 強調在克服挑戰時堅持不懈的重要性，因為改變很少會在一夜之間發生。
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批判性思維： 使用這個故事來培養對社會規範和成功意義的批判性思維。
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同理心： 理解巴比特的內心衝突可以幫助學生對面臨類似掙扎的其他人產生同理心。
結論
辛克萊·路易斯的《巴比特》提供了對中產階級生活以及人類對意義和歸屬感的渴望的豐富探索。對於年輕讀者來說，它提供了關於個體性、社會影響和追求真實幸福的寶貴教訓。通過研究巴比特的經歷，學生可以深入了解自己的生活，並學會以更大的意識和正直來應對社會的複雜性。
