Existentialism in “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgeralds fiction presents not only the magic of the Jazz Age but likewise its immorality, materialism, and degradation of the benignant spirit. While Fitzgerald was probably not trying to specifically present existentialism in his consummations, Finkelstein describes Fitzgeralds work as having an existential theme F. Scott Fitzgerald was of this milieu, and at the same epoch critically detached from it. He expressed its hard-boiled, disillusioned attitude through the deliberate use of alienated imagery (171).He manages to present the existential theme of dis restoreion along with other existential issues the characters in his fiction characterize the existential imaginations of the absurdity of smell, the absolute freedom of prime(prenominal), and living with the consequence of ones choices. In Babylon Revisited, the freedom of choice leads the characters to exploit wealth and freedom and, eventually, to regret past times actions and try to make up for the abuse of this freedom. In Babylon Revisited the reader can see the absurdity of spirit through the rise, fall and rebuilding of Charlie Wales.He chooses to drink and spend all his money. He loses every thing in the stock market crash but attempts to rebuild his sprightliness. Charlie is distraught oer the tragic loss of his wife but realizes that he must suffer the consequences of his prior actions.Regaining custody of his young woman Honoria serves as a symbol that Charlie has recouped control of his vivification. This base presents the ideas of existentialism as they apply to Babylon Revisited. The greatest tenet of existentialism in Babylon Revisited is that life is absurd because there is no true importee.Individuals must create meaning therefore they are constantly searching for themselves. Charlie Wales was searching for his true meaning and made some choices that led to bad consequences. The ultimate absurdity in this layer is that Charlie makes the right decision to turn hi s life around, but because he must live with his consequences, he fails to regain custody of his daughter. Although Charlie believes he has moved beyond his foregoing profligate behavior, his sister-in law does not, and she makes the decision to keep his daughter from him.The most absurd part is that Charlie is better suited todayadays to engender care of his daughter but Marion manages to remain in control of the situation. He works hard to build his life digest up but one happening (that reflects his past life) turns everything elevation d bear.Charlie Wales made some choices that led to bad consequences. The ultimate absurdity in this story is that even though Charlie has made the right decision to turn his life around, he must live with the consequences of his previous decisions and fails to regain custody of his daughter.The absurdity here deals with the fact that Charlies experiences run contrary to expectations. If he has indeed changed his life, he should be rewarded for his redemption unfortunately, he is not. He works hard to build his life back up but one incident (that reflects his past life) turns everything upside down.Although Charlie is now strong, his sister-in-law Marion is not, and she makes the decision to keep his daughter from him. Charlie may be better suited now to take care of his daughter, but Marion manages to remain in control of the situation.Charlie makes the choice to go back to the bar where he had spent much time in the past, and he makes the absurdly innocuous choice to give the bartender the Peters address, which leads to the incident of Duncan and Lorraines visit to the Peters apart workforcet that destroys the entire effort to rent his daughter back.The reader, therefore, can never truly hit the hay how prominent of a role Charlie plays in his own downfall. He lives, as we all do, in an absurd cosmos and this absurdity magnifies the impact of even the smallest decision. The existential idea of free go forth is im portant in Babylon Revisited. Sartre postulates a concept of being-in-itself that corresponds to one pheno manpoweral world, and it does not lie within the power of the individual to choose it. Individuals exist by virtue of personal choice. He believes there is no universal a priori structure of consciousness, no common human nature, no native set of desires shared by all men that dispose us to project one kind of values to the exclusion of others or to give being-in-itself one kind of meaning rather than another (Olson 133). individually individual is absolutely free.Charlie Wales exercised his free entrust prior to Helens death in a series of wasteful actions that Fitzgerald presents as having a connection to the biblical idea of Babylon. The writings of the Fathers of the Church describe Babylon as the ancient center of luxury and wickedness (Baker 270).Fitzgerald develops the Babylon motif by presenting Charlies actions as catering to ill-doing and waste (215). Here, Fitzge ralds work can be seen as assimilating Nietzsches idea that God is dead and each individual must be the god of himself in a world with bug out a God (Lavine 325).Since the existentialist mentality has as its basis the concept that an individual is free to make choices for the life he or she lives, he or she is absolutely responsible for the world in which he or she lives. The concept of being-in-itself did not cause Charlie to choose this life.If, therefore, he made a bad choice, he cannot hold anyone else responsible. Not until after the stock market crash does Charlie realize the consequences of his actions and feel the guilt of those consequences. He realizes that, like all individuals, he is responsible for everything he does (Toor 157).Charlie is held responsible for his actions in that he loses both his wife and daughter. He cannot reclaim his daughter until he accepts the consequences of his past. Charlie Wales pays the penance for his choice to drink and live the life of Bab ylon (Eble 42).He realizes that he must pay the price It money 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 (Fitzgerald 216).For Charlie, the suddenness of the Depression creates a sense of dislocation, a feeling that he is living in two worlds at once. He is committed to the idea of recovery and the new way of life he has created, but he still clings partially to many of the habits he formed during the boom (Way 91).Charlie Wales makes the existential choice to live the Babylonian concept of vice and waste. He now, however, feels the stress of his actions, and he makes the choice to try to reconcile his former failings. The recovery is the important change that Charlie makes.His main purpose is to regain custody of Honoria. Charlie feels as if he has paid the price for his past choices and has sufficiently acquire enough to look after Honoria himself. He tells Marion and Lincoln that he is anxious to have a home and anxious to have Honoria in it.He states that things have changed radically with him (Fitzgerald 220). The memory of Helen drives Charlie to work hard and make himself a better person. He is working to frig around Honoria not only for his own sake, but for the sake of his dead wife.Fitzgerald is showing the sort of strength in Charlie that the reader does not see in Marion. Charlie has knowing to control his drinking. When Marion finds out he had been in a bar before coming to her apartment, she chides him. He responds, I take one drink every afternoon and Ive had that (213).He is trying to prove that he can control his drinking habits. He has one drink to enjoy the idea and taste of alcohol but will not allow himself to drink in excess. This is his idea of control, I take that drink deliberately so that the idea of alcohol wont get too big in my imagination (Fitzgerald 221).He knows it will be difficult to persuade Marion to let Honoria go, but he is confident that if he accepts her recriminations patiently and convinces her of his newly acquired steadiness of character, he will ultimately be successful. Another element of Charlies recovery that Fitzgerald addresses is his renewed relationship with his daughter.Fitzgerald makes it obvious in the beginning of the novel that Honoria was not the first thing on the mind of her parents during their Babylon days. When the barman asks why he is in town and Charlie responds that he is in Paris to see his daughter, the barman replies questioningly, Oh-hYou have a piffling girl? (211). Someone who knew Charlie fairly well during his drinking days did not even know that he had a daughter. Fitzgerald contrasts this idea of having no relationship with his daughter by showing with tenderness and affection the scenes in which Charlie tentatively establishes contact with H onoria.He buys her toys and takes her to the circus, creating once again the atmosphere of love between them. Although he may be buying the love of his daughter, Marion grudgingly admits that Charlie has earned the right to his child (Way 91). Fitzgerald also shows the intense love that the child has for her father.She wants to go with him to Prague and asks when she will get to be with him (217). Charlie has recovered to the point that he wants to be with his child and she wants to be with him. Ultimately, when Marion denies him the child, he again shows strength of character (Way 109).He remains lonely but self-confident, He would come back some day they couldnt make him pay forever (Fitzgerald 230). Sartre believes that there are moments of anguish when life loses its meaning when the objects that formerly drew our attention fade into obliviousness and the desires that had previously guided our conduct seem vain or petty (Olson 131).This creates an ugliness in the world to which people must react. These moments of anguish in Babylon Revisited go across when Charlies friends manage to show up at the most inopportune times Sudden ghosts out of the past Duncan Schaeffer, a friend from college.Lorraine Quarries one of a conclave who had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago (Fitzgerald 217). In a foreshadowing of the more crucial usurpation that Duncan and Lorraine will make later in the story, the first encounter with the duo is when they intrude on Charlies luncheon with Honoria.They invite him to come sit in the bar with them and also invite him to dinner. They cannot accept the change in Charlie. Their intrusion is an unwanted product of Charlies past, and they are outside forces that affect his life that he cannot control (Cooper 52). Later in the story, Lorraine invites him to dinner, reminding him of their drunken exploits. As a temptress, she has lost her charm for Charlie. He instead goes to meet with the Peters a nd his daughter (Baker 272). Just as Charlie has regained permission to take his child, the final, and most detrimental, intrusion occurs.Lorraine and Duncan crash the apartment, unmistakably drunk. They loudly and brutishly encourage him to join them for dinner. He tries feverishly to get them out of the apartment, but they are the reminders of his old life that Marion need to change her mind. Lorraine will not let Charlie forget about his mistakes, All right well go. But I remember once when you hammered on my accession at 4 a. m. I was enough of a sport to give you a drink (Fitzgerald 227). Charlie knows that he has lost Honoria because of these outside forces that try to make him weaker.Fitzgerald shows that Charlie is stronger because of his life change. Charlie dealt with the encounters by choosing to be strong, Somehow an unwelcome encounter. His old friends liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than the y were now because they wanted to ingest a certain sustenance from his strength (218). This strength has led to Charlies feeling of isolation. He goes to the Ritz bar in search of Duncan and Lorraine with the idea of finding them and letting them know that they possibly ruined his life.They had done their sorry work and vanished from his life (Baker 273). Existential philosophy includes alienation from the world, from ones fellows, from oneself (Finkelstein), and Charlie suffers this type of alienation. He has lost his family and his life. When he eventually fails to regain custody of Honoria, he questions why life dealt him this hand He wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact. He wasnt young any more, with a hatful of nice thoughts and dreams to have himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldnt have wanted him to be so alone (Fitzgerald 230).Babylon Revisited opens in the Ritz bar, a symbolic prison for those pin down in Charlies lifestyle. Charlie spe nt many nights in the prison of the Ritz bar, when he was in his prime party era. Charlie drinks himself into a sanitarium before he begins to come out of the prison of alcoholism.The story then ends again in the Ritz bar. Charlie has come full circle since the beginning of the story. He found happiness in knowing that he would take Honoria home, and then his past of loneliness finds him. The intrusions lead to his ultimate loneliness again (Griffith 237).He is sitting in the Ritz bar when he finds out that Marion has refused to let Honoria go. He realizes that his loneliness will not end because of the mistakes that he has made Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare the men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasnt real snow.If you didnt want it to be snow, you just paid some money (229). The prosperity that he once had is now imprisoning him in a life of solitude and loneliness. The sentence that he must pay in this priso n is six more months of loneliness before he can try to get custody of Honoria again (Baker 274).LeVot, in his discussion of Fitzgeralds life, notes that this story marks the end of an era. This is the foreclosure of the almost divine privileges Americans had enjoyed before the Depression. Charlie Wales feels like a king stripped of his kingdom, his past, his illusions (256).Ten years after he wrote the story, Fitzgerald stated that the story was his farewell to youth. Just as Fitzgerald is fearful that his own irresponsibility will twist to his daughter, Charlie tries to wipe out the past so it will not affect Honoria. LeVot states, A great wave of protectiveness went over him. He thought he knew what to do for her.He believed in character, he wanted to jump back a whole generation and trust in character again as the eternally rich element (256). He wants to revive an earlier virtue, for the sake of Honoria. This revival will help to alleviate the loneliness he feels without his daughter.Fitzgerald felt the loneliness brought about by his addiction to alcohol (LeVot Fitzgerald in Paris 51). Bruccoli states that when Charlie remembers his Paris nights that these were probably Fitzgeralds own memories, When Fitzgerald went pub-crawling by himself, it was sometimes hard to terminate his revels (239).His talent and charm often rescue him from the social morasses he created. Bruccoli shares an incident when Fitzgerald showed up drunk at the Paris Tribune and ripped up copy. He sang and insisted that the other reporters join in. When several friends tried to take him home, he insisted that they tour the bars.He finally passed out, but when they delivered him to his apartment he refused to go in. They eventually had to carry Fitzgerald into to his apartment, kicking and screaming. This account was forgiven, as were most of his other escapades (239).Charlie Wales, contrasted Fitzgerald, has not been forgiven and remains separated from his wife and daughter due to alcoholism. He had to work hard to regain his life. The existential absurdity is that he was unable to get custody of Honoria, although he paid the penance for his past sins.Charlie chose to live the life of Babylon and lost everything. After doing everything right to change his life, the outside forces of Duncan and Lorraine ruined his plans to make a home with Honoria. These outside forces are the consequences of the past life that Charlie chose to live.Existentialists not only believe in free will but also living with the consequences of past decisions. Charlies past decisions led to his ultimate loneliness and alienation. Sartre makes the point that alienation is one of the greatest tenets of existentialism.Although Fitzgerald is not an existentialist, his characters in Babylon Revisited are good examples of the ideas of the existentialist movement and how those ideas affect and shape a persons existence.Works Cited Baker, Carlos. When the Story Ends, Babylon Revisited. The Sho rt Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald sweet Approaches in Criticism. Madison, Wisconsin U of Wisconsin P, 1982. 269-277.Bruccoli, Matthew J. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur. naked as a jaybird York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.Finkelstein, Sidney. Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature. New York International Publishers, 1965.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited and Other Stories. New York Macmillan Scribner Classic, 1988. 210-230.Griffith, Richard R. A Note on Fitzgeralds Babylon Revisited. American Literature 35 (May 1963) 236-239.Lavine, T. Z. From Socrates to Sartre the Philosophic Quest. New York Bantam, 1984.LeVot, Andre. F. Scott Fitzgerald A Biography. New York Doubleday, 1983.LeVot, Andre. Fitzgerald in Paris. Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 5 (1973) 49-68.Olson, Robert G. A Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York Harcourt, Brace, 1967.Toor, David. Guilt and Retribution in Babylon Revisited. Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 5 (1973) 155-64.Way, Brian. F. Scott Fi tzgerald and the Art of Social Fiction. New York St. Martins, 1980.