Marxism in Babylon Revisited

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Book report - Babylon Revisited

Babylon Revisited is the portrait of a man attempting to get his life back after having made several bad mistakes in the years following his rise to riches during the glory days of the stock market in the 1920s He failed to comprehend the tyranny of time and the subversive properties of money , thereby ending up in a tragic defeat . Babylon Revisited was authored by F . Scott Fitzgerald and was first published in

February , 1931in Saturday Evening Post . Babylon Revisited was one of the best works of Scott Fitzgerald

The hero of the story , Charlie Wales , is making an attempt to bring himself back to the show with the American Dream after suffering a serous setback by his wife 's death , a financial crash due to a stock market crash , and a tough struggle with alcoholism . He slowly recovers from alcoholism , becomes a businessman in Prague and returns to Paris in an attempt to win back custody of his daughter , Honoria . As far as Charlie is concerned , Honoria was the last hope of re-establishing his lost family life . Charlie has good hope as Honoria is still forgiving and trusting being at the young age of nine . But bringing the child back and gaining her guardianship is not easy as the girl is under the legal guardianship of Marion Peters , Charlie 's sister-in-law , who firmly holds Charlie 's history against him

Charles Wales , the central character the story , renounces the old customary ethics and morals that America maintained as sacred , and submits himself to the luxurious and extravagant and reckless life style followed in the new Babylon , Paris in the 1920s . The misunderstood sense of temporary security offered by the sudden and momentary business boom blinds the western world and quickly plunges them to the unexpected danger of Depression . Charles was one of its victims making him a big looser and bankrupt . Unfortunately , during the `boom ' Charles loses everything he had , wife , child , and money . The giant setback however brought about a sobering effect on his outlook and character of Charlie He walked through the path of recovery coming out from the hold of alcohol and poverty and regains majority of his previous state of rectitude

Babylon Revisited is considered as the most renowned , most considered and the widely read short fiction of Scott Fitzgerald . It has got numerous features that make it unique . It is a wonderful combination of reality , fiction and an autobiography . Babylon Revisited beautifully intimates the times and a personal tragedy and is an often anthologized short story . The author prepared the story in the background of his life , including the turmoil and troubles of his own life . Babylon Revisited is a perfect blend of the rich and first hand experiences of the author mixed with historical realities . The author 's claim of the story as intensely personal is trustworthy to the core as we can see a very familiar stage , on which the story is build up . This familiarity is very much making Babylon Revisited a masterful work

Babylon Revisited is considered as one of the greatest short stories of Fitzgerald . It beautifully combines numerous human themes of loss (Fitzgerald ) with a background of the social times in which the story happens (Paris in the 1920s . These aspects and realities give them a resonance (personal experiences being the major part ) unlike the other works of Fitzgerald . Fitzgerald should be remembered and valued most for the way he fixes fiction among realities and it is his style and not the subject matter that makes him exceptional . He possesses the capability to capture feeling and emotion wonderfully as well . Taking Charlie as an example , his exasperation is palpably present to readers thorough the beautiful given by Fitzgerald

The beauty of Babylon Revisited as a work of fiction is the author 's skill to encompass variety of themes while keeping the important questions about Charlie Wales ' character in suspense . Anyway , the plot is all about a desperate father who attempts to regain the custody of his daughter after being away from the scene for few years resulting from a series of personal disasters in life and business . Readers and critics repeatedly appreciate the story for its beautiful , authentic original and affecting portrayal of the love between Charlie and Honoria . Later the author himself commented about the love and tragedy of the father and the child as the central theme or heart of the story Build up on the foundation of this emotional core , the author dramatizes a world of emotional , historical , social , and psychological themes Charlie 's struggle to win back Honoria can also be considered as his attempt to prove to him and to his acquaintances that he is a new man with a born again heart . He wanted to prove that he has left his previous life style , had learned from the life 's lessons and has now come up like a phoenix bird , trying to regain whatever he lost in his life . Before a year and half he was an unemployed , irresponsible alcoholic and spendthrift being in the company of bad friends . Besides all other losses he had a broken marriage , and a malevolent streak that made him lock his wife out of their apartment in a winter night . Charlie now appears to the same society , friends and his sister 's family as well as to the reader as a radically changed new person who is completely delivered from his old practices and habits . Charlie has once again become sober and employed appearing as a reformed sinner , with a new appreciation of values , moral elements and personal character as the `eternally valuable element

Much of the story of Babylon Revisited is centered on the concept that Charlie is a real person who experienced all these real experiences in the recent and true background of the 1920s . However , Charlie is found to be continuously flirt dangerously with his past life . He appears often in the Ritz bar , the former gathering place of his old drinking partners he informs the barman the address so that his former drinking friends can find him he feels nostalgic about the `sort of magic ' he enjoyed in his earlier inebriated times and he is even found in the nightclubs and nude revues where he was usually found in his previous life . But Charlie possesses a well-paying job in Prague now and displays a wonderful love and concern for his daughter , and is really really sad by his wife 's death and his horrifying past . Charlie is found to be rebellious to Lorraine Quarrles in the matter of gaining the custody of his daughter and constantly displays self-control by abstaining from drinks . He is also found to be very much composed when Marion accuses him for causing his wife 's death . The strangeness and unusualness of Charlie 's character and behavior is also visible in the strange and unusual ending of the story . Lorraine and Duncan 's appearance has influenced Marion 's mind as she willingly surrenders Honoria to Charlie Readers can again find Charlie at the Ritz bar , replaying his guilty memory of his collapsed previous life and the night his wife was locked out in the snow by him . His last meeting with Lincoln Peters concludes his plans to leave Paris with Honoria , but he has the hope that he will get a second chance . The story concludes with Charlie ambiguously allowing himself into self-pity , acknowledging that he is no longer young as he was . He allows lots of nice thoughts and dreams to come to him , remembering the old days and further strengthening his own determination to find victory in the end . The story ends saying that `he would come back some day they couldn 't make him pay forever

Apart from Charlie 's personal tragedy , Babylon Revisited also highlights various social and historical issues of the period in which the story took place . The story speaks about the contrast between decadent culture of Europe and the decent domesticity of long-established and customary American values . The story is a history text of America 's transition from its prosperity in the 1920s to the confined and distressed conditions of the big Depression . Apart from all this , the story discusses the moral value of work versus the `free money ' of the dreaming and speculating investors of the `boom ' years . In Babylon Revisited Charlie is asking a central question of Marxism `what is the moral value of work vs . free money ' Moral money is the money gained though hard work . Free money is the money gained out of profits from share markets . Investing brings free money to investors who seldom labor with their hand . Share markets provide free money to the dreaming idle investors . Thus , Charlie 's story , or Babylon Revisited can serve as an allegory for Marxist principles . In a point typical of the plot 's fusion of utter personal and wider social themes , the author compresses Charlie 's story into the history and life style of the generation that prevailed during the boom years of the 1920s . Being at the Ritz bar after his plans for regaining custody of Honoria being vanished , Charlie discusses with Paul the barman regarding the `great change ' created by the stock market crash the previous year . When Paul mentioned that he heard that Charlie suffered a big set back at the Crash , Charlie responded by saying that I did , but I lost everything I wanted in the boom ' Paul mentions this as a reference to `selling short ' the perfect method to destroy money when there is a boom in the stock market . Fitzgerald thus combines Charlie 's personal history with the history of his age

Works Cited

HYPERLINK "http /www .amazon .com /s /239261 ?ie UTF8 index books rank -r elevance 2C 2Bavailability 2C-daterank field-author-exact F 20Scott 20F itzgerald " Fitzgerald , F . S . Babylon Revisited : And Other Stories Scribner , 1996

Fitzgerald , F . S . Babylon Revisited ' The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction . New York : W .W . Norton Company , 2000

Walton , E . H . Scott Fitzgerald 's Tales ' New York Times Book Review 7 .25 (1935

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