Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)

Studies - Zoltán Simon: The Image of Technology in Selected American Novels of the 1920's

abandons his routine and attempts to break out from the monotony of his personal and public^ life. Babbitt never gets far beyond the recognition of the dreariness of his life: the prospects of losing the security offered by this kind of existence, however bleak, frightens him and he backs off at the first opportunity. As merely a part of a larger mechanism without an individuality of his own, he can only function properly in place in the bigger machine of middle-class existence. Even though the novel ends on a happy note for Babbitt himself, the reader is made acutely aware of the sad state of affairs for George F. Babbitt and the millions of Babbitts throughout the world in the 1920s or in the 1990s. The radical lawyer, Seneca Doane, who could be considered more than anybody in the novel as Lewis's mouthpiece, resolves best the ambivalent relationship toward progress and technology. Just like Babbitt (or Lewis, for that matter) he is an admirer of material and technological progress: "Zenith is a city with gigantic power

— gigantic buildings, gigantic machines, gigantic transportation" (84), he says exaltedly to the less than enthusiastic scientist, Kurt Yavitch. Significantly, he defends the notion of standardization as necessary for efficiency and progress, but insists that it should be confined to its place in the technological sphere. What he is fighting against is the standardization of thought, in other words, the extension of the technological and industrial principles to society. He (and through his voice, Lewis) insists that an element of incalculability will always remain necessary in order to maintain our basic human nature and to avoid the danger of becoming machines ourselves: "Personally, I prefer a city with a future so unknown that it excites my imagination" (85), he says. Whether the next generation of Zenith's inhabitants, best personified by young Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt will measure up to this new technological civilization remains an open question at the end of the novel, signaling Lewis's own doubts about the outcome of the interaction between humanity and technology. III. "Like many of his generation, Bos Passos had a love-hate relationship to the machine age" (202), writes Cecelia Tichi in her 53