Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited - Essay Example

A Formal Analysis of Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited is a tragic story of a man’s struggle to reclaim moral ascendancy. Fitzgerald fills Charlie’s life with sympathy, never drawing back from a truthful depiction of his protagonist’s flaws and failures, yet passionate of his daughter and his sincere attempts to change. What is not certain is whether Charlie has truly changed or merely deceiving himself that he has. This essay uses a formal analysis to prove that Charlie is indeed truly reformed, but he still feels nostalgic of Paris, which becomes the symbol of his degeneracy. Some readers may think that Charlie is only deceiving himself that he has completely changed because he still misses Paris and his pals during his wild years. But this essay proves that Charlie is a truly changed man, and he is trying to come to terms with his past in order to successfully move on with the life he now longs for, a life with his daughter, Honoria. His visit to the Ritz Bar is not because of nostalgia, but regret. Fitzgerald portrays the affluent expatriate way of life in Paris in the 1920s through the fairly discerning, fairly nostalgic depiction of Charlie of the period. When Marion remarks that Paris became lovelier when many Americans left, Charlie answers regretfully, “It was nice while it lasted… We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us” (Fitzgerald 213). Although the overindulgences of being wealthy eventually resulted in the death of his wife, he is much more wistful than he is disapproving of that period. When he returned to Paris, Charlie wanders quite distastefully along the nightclub area, where he spent most of his time in the past, and thinks about the outcomes of his debauchery (Fitzgerald 214): All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word ‘dissipate’—to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something… He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab. But it hadn’t been given for nothing. It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember—his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont. The obviously rehabilitated Charlie gravely yearns to regain responsibility for his daughter, and he decides that he “must be both parents to her” (Fitzgerald 216). At the outset it appears unreasonable that he was not able to reclaim custody of her daughter. Marion is antagonistic, firmly believing that Charlie was a very bad person. Thus, Babylon Revisited is an emotional narrative of a genuinely changed, passionate father whose efforts to reclaim his daughter are frustrated by external forces outside his control. However, Charlie is totally to blame for challenging his own intention. Even though he insists that he has been genuinely reformed, he fails to let go of his connection and commitment to the past that takes him back to the corrupt habits of his feral years. Basically, the narrative starts and closes in the Ritz Bar, which Fitzgerald associates with the lavishness and thoughtless spending of migrants. Upon stepping to Paris once again, Charlie immediately asks about his old acquaintances and handed over the address of the Peterses to be passed on particularly to Duncan—an obvious sign of his blameworthiness, in spite of his unwillingness to tell Duncan where he is staying when he talks with him face to face. This is a very important aspect of the plot, at times ignored, in a cautiously created narrative that hooks up cause and consequence. The wistful tour to the Ritz Bar is the most unwise decision for a person whose intention rests in his ability to prove that he has been successfully reformed. Giving his address to his pals in debauchery makes it looks like that he is reluctant to fully forget and let go of his past, in spite of its disastrous outcomes. When Charlie walks out of Peters’ house after the ruinous stopover of his degenerate pals, Duncan and Lorraine, he goes back to the Ritz Bar, where he talks with the chief barman (Fitzgerald 229): “I heard that you lost a lot in the crash.” “I did,” and he added grimly, “but I lost everything I wanted in the boom.” “Selling short.” “Something like that.” The chief barman is referring to the stock market, and the act of selling and buying stock. Charlie was one of the most badly affected by the collapse of the stock market in 1929. And what is most painful—“everything I wanted”—is that he lost his family. This conversation alone clearly shows that Charlie was regretful, not of losing his fortune, but losing his family, especially his daughter. Showing adequate improvement to take back Honoria would have brought back his sense of worth. Babylon Revisited closes with Charlie once again in the mercy of Paris, which is a representation of Babylon, reeling in a feeling of abandon and defeat. Definitely, the narrative’s symbol of payment indicates that Charlie, not like numerous of his past buddies, has already suffered the cost of his irresponsibility and is still paying for his capriciousness. He tried very hard to change, and he succeeded. But without his daughter, who is the concrete, physical evidence of his reformation, to strengthen and support him, Charlie begins to regress into his past self-destructive deeds. Indeed, what some readers may construe as Charlie’s self-deception, or of deceiving himself that he has truly changed, are in fact indications that he is beginning to slip back into his old self because of his failure to take back his daughter. But Charlie is obviously a genuinely reformed man, determined to be a responsible, caring father to Honoria. Work Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited: And Other Stories. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. Print. Read More