"Babylon Revisited" is a short story by
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the ''
Saturday Evening Post'' and free inside ''
The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'', the following Saturday.
The story is set in the year after the
stock market crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
, just after what Fitzgerald called the
Jazz Age. Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz Age. Also it shows several references to the
Great Depression and how the character had to adapt his life to it. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.
Summary
"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."
"Babylon Revisited" is split into five sections, and the short story begins with Charlie Wales sitting at Ritz Bar in Paris; he is having a conversation with the bartender, Alix. While in conversation with Alix the bartender, he inquires about his old friends whom he used to drink and attend parties with. He leaves the bartender with an address where his friends might be able to find him; later on he realizes that is a mistake. During the years of the
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the ...
, Charlie Wales spent his days drinking and partying and seemed not to have a single care in the world. At the time the story is set, Charlie sees the world differently, as he is no longer consumed by the extravagant lifestyle of the 1920s he once lived. He was a frequent drinker and party goer but now only allows himself to have one drink per day. He eventually leaves the bar and observes the streets of Paris with a sense of nostalgia now that the party days are over but also acknowledges how much his previous behavior and lifestyle have impacted his life in negative ways.
During the Roaring Twenties, Charlie had lost everything, from money to his family. But he is now in Paris to reclaim his rights as a father to his daughter, Honoria, who is currently under the care of Charlie's sister-in-law, Marion Peters, and her husband, Lincoln Peters. Honoria is now in custody of her aunt Marion because her mother, Helen, had died during the party years, and Marion blames Charlie for the death of her sister. Charlie and Helen were frequent party goers, and as the story progresses, the reader learns that one night Charlie got angry about his wife kissing another man and left her out in the snow. The story indicates that while Honoria's mother might have had some issues with her heart, he also was recovering from alcoholism at a facility and their relationship might have been toxic. Marion blames Charlie for the death of her sister and constantly sees him as a bad person. The story reveals that she has this grudge against him because she hated that her sister and Charlie were out spending so much money on unnecessary partying while she and her husband, Lincoln, were barely getting by. He fears that Marion will put ideas in Honoria's head and turn his daughter against him because of her beliefs about him.
Charlie has frequent lunches with his daughter and spends time with her at the Peterses’ to show Marion that he is indeed a good father and to show her that his drunken party days are behind him. His main priority is his daughter, and he wants her to live with him in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
. Honoria even begins to question him about why she is not living with him. Marion, seeing his efforts, has finally changed her mind and has decided to let Honoria live with her father. The same afternoon, Charlie is at the Peterses’ home with his daughter when suddenly there is someone at the door. On the other side are his old friends Duncan and Lorraine, whom he had asked the bartender Alix about. His friends are very obviously drunk and keep insisting that Charlie go to dinner with them; he turns down their offer twice, and they finally go away unhappy with him. Marion, observing this, after dinner completely withdraws her offer to let Charlie take his daughter back to Prague with him, for she fears he is not completely over his drunken days.
Charlie feels devastated and sees his efforts have gone down the drain. He goes back to the Ritz, thinking he would run into Lorraine and Duncan there but instead finding another bartender he knew well from his partying days. They have a short conversation, and Charlie continues to reminisce about his old partying days and all of the bad times in his marriage with Helen. He is consumed with thoughts about the 1920s, when people were so careless, drunk and on drugs all the time. After some time, he calls Lincoln and asks if he really can't take his daughter back with him. Lincoln informs him that he cannot because Marion is far too upset at what happened and that he is going to have to wait another six months to try to get his daughter back. Charlie, upset at Lincoln's response, goes back to the bar and sits. He feels trapped and broods over how much time will have to pass until Marion stops making him pay for his former lifestyle and mistakes. He keeps thinking and is certain Helen would want him to be with his daughter and not alone.
List of characters
*Charles J. Wales - American businessman living in Prague, widower, who occasionally goes to Paris to see his daughter Honoria
*Helen Wales - Charles's late wife
*Honoria Wales - 9-year-old daughter of Charles and Helen
*Marion Peters - Charles's sister-in-law (Helen's sister)
*Lincoln Peters - Marion's husband
*Duncan Scheaffer - Old friend of Charles
*Lorraine Quarrels - Old friend of Charles
*Alix - Barman at the Ritz, Paris
*Elsie and Richard Peters - Honoria's cousins, children of Marion and Lincoln
*Simone - Honoria's doll
*Mr Campbell, George Hardt, Snow Bird, Claude Fessenden - Old friends of Charles, merely quoted in the story
*Paul - Head barman at the Ritz, also merely quoted in the story
Major themes
Time
A major theme of the story is of time and the inevitability of past mistakes resurfacing. Due to Charlie's incapability to cope after the stock market crash, he tries to make up for all of the years that he missed out on during Honoria's childhood by proving his sobriety to his sister-in-law Marion. Charlie recognizes the mistakes he made in the past that caused him to lose his daughter in the first place, and his constant longing for a future with her results in his past coming back to haunt him.
Dislocation and alienation
During the
modernist literary movement during which this story was written, a common theme was that of dislocation and alienation. After losing his wife, and then eventually his daughter, Charlie feels an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Following the
Great Depression and the stock market crash, he is confronted with the consequences of his foolish and incautious past, causing him to find the motivation to win custody of his daughter to ease the pain of his miserable solitude.
Absurdity and guilt
Especially present in this story is the theme of absurdity and incongruity as well as immense guilt. Charlie made his life better for himself and then had his goals and dreams taken away from him by the failure to take his daughter back under his own wing. Charlie's past experiences caused him to fail in achieving Honoria's custody despite hard work and dedication to remaking himself to become a better person and a better father.
He is burdened with guilt because of his past mistakes that caused him to lose his daughter, even though he made a valiant effort to rebuild his morale.
Hopefulness and disappointment
Throughout the story, Charlie builds an enormous amount of hope for the retrieval of his daughter. Charlie's euphoria continues to grow as he becomes more and more hopeful of this preferred outcome. At the end of the story, he is faced with the disappointment of losing this chance to rekindle the relationship between himself and his daughter.
Basis in real life
The story is based on a true incident regarding Fitzgerald, his daughter Scottie, his sister-in-law Rosalind and her husband Newman Smith (a banker based in Belgium, who was a colonel in the U.S. Army in World War II would be in charge of worldwide strategic deception for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), on whom Marion and Lincoln Peters are based. Rosalind and Newman had not been able financially to live as well as Scott and Zelda had lived during the 1920s, and they had always regarded Scott as an irresponsible drunkard whose obsession with high living was responsible for Zelda's mental problems. When Zelda suffered a breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium in Switzerland, Rosalind felt that Scott was unfit to raise their daughter and that Rosalind and Newman should adopt her.
In popular culture
"Babylon Revisited" was adapted for the 1954 film ''
The Last Time I Saw Paris
''The Last Time I Saw Paris'' is a 1954 American Technicolor romantic drama made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited." It was directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Jack Cummings ...
'' with the setting updated to post-WWII Paris and main character Charles turned into an aspiring novelist.
In the television series ''
Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its f ...
'', the character
Betty Draper
Elizabeth "Betty" Hofstadt Francis (formerly Draper) is a fictional character on AMC's television series '' Mad Men'', wife of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and mother of his three children. Blonde and beautiful but emotionally distant and immature, she s ...
is seen reading the story in the season two episode
Three Sundays
"Three Sundays" is the fourth episode of the second season of the American television drama series Mad Men. It was written by Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton and directed by Tim Hunter. The episode originally aired on AMC in the Unite ...
.
See also
* ''
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories
''Babylon Revisited and Other Stories'' is a collection of ten short story, short stories written between 1920 and 1937 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was published in 1960 by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Selection
''Babylon Revisited'' collects ten of F ...
''
References
External links
Text of "Babylon Revisited"at
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...
Australia
"Babylon Revisited" Study Guideby Lina Goldberg
Expostulation and Thesisby Thomas A. Larson
"Babylon Revisited" in a nutshellat shmoop.com
{{Fitzgerald
Short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1931 short stories
Works originally published in The Saturday Evening Post
Short stories adapted into films
1930s short stories