Babbitt Lesson Plan

Discuss the hypocrisy of the characters during the Babbitts’s dinner party.

During the dinner party, we see one of the great hypocrisies of the Prohibition era: in public, individuals present a self-satisfied moral stance on the matter. The truth of the matter is, however, that they will indulge in liquor whenever the opportunity arises. Babbitt himself is thrilled by his trip to purchase an illegal bottle of gin, and he is drunk before his guests even arrive; Chum Frink has recently written a poem denouncing “poison booze” and advocating for sobriety, but he too is eager to indulge.

How does Prohibition become an issue of class over the course of the dinner guests’...