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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the
intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever,
talking, talking, while he agonized, "Darn fool to be eating all this--not
'nother mouthful," and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter
of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends; he was
not uplifted when Howard Littlefield produced from his treasure-house of
scholarship the information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16,
which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was
not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape
from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the
davenport in the living-room.
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