Theme of Time in "Babylon Revisited" Essay

“He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.”(Fitzgerald). “The Great Gatsby” was a great literary piece that has conjured numerous meanings. Some might say that the meaning of the novel is focused on the consequences of obsessive love; Or it might be focused on a dark depiction of the world and maybe the novel defines something essential about American cultural values. However, I believe that the true denotation of “The Great Gatsby” is that our desire to recapture the past holds a deep allure, but this desire is both unachievable and self-destructive because of the actions and dreams that Gatsby had

     The final page offers much of Fitzgerald’s perspective, and it is wonderfully summed up in the final sentence of the book.

The conception of time is an idea of a period of length that is constantly described based upon diverse periods and aspects. Although time is always consistently flowing in the same direction, it is broken up into the ideas of the past, present, and future. Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the character Jay Gatsby is shown as a character who constantly wastes his life in the past wishing for his idyllic vision. Fitzgerald presents the reader with the idea that over time, the course of reality destroys the romantic illusions that characters idealize. Although time is a constant force that creates, in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the character Jay Gatsby to illustrate the idea that time is in reality, a destructive force.

Time remains a universal continuation of the past into the present and bears a strong hold on the future. The destruction of satisfaction in history withholds the contentment of the future with an impeding sense of unalterable guilt. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates “the past is forever in the present” through numerous literary and narrative techniques, suggesting that memories serve as crucial components in the development of individuals.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Scribners, 1994. pg. 352.

Throughout two of F Scott Fitzgerald's books, ‘The Great Gatsby' and ‘Tender is the Night', comparisons can be made between the themes that are dealt with in each book.

F. Scott Fitzgerald understands that memory is a double-edged sword, and he illustrates this thought in two of his short stories, Babylon Revisited and Winter Dreams. In his story Babylon Revisited, the protagonist, Charles Wales, is tormented by memories of his past. His wife is dead, and his old friends won’t stop interfering in his life. His sister-in-law is basing her current ideas of him on the fact that he was an irresponsible person in the past, and it hurts his life greatly. Winter Dreams takes a slightly different approach. In this tale, the memories of the protagonist, Dexter Green, start off as pleasant but are later warped by new information. With these two works, Fitzgerald describes the problems that memories can cause in

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” contains many examples where chance works against Charlie in this short story. Three key examples are found inside the literary text and are similar because they show chance working against Charlie. The three examples are the stock market crashing, Charlie’s daughter’s guardian getting sick, and him running into people from his alcoholic past. All of these detailed examples in “Babylon Revisited” show how chance works against Charlie by not helping him regain the custody of his only daughter.

Written during and regarding the 1920s, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald is both a representation of this distinctive social and historical context, and a construction of the composer’s experience of this era. Beliefs and practises of the present also play a crucial role in shaping the text, in particular changing the way in which literary techniques are interpreted. The present-day responder is powerfully influenced by their personal experiences, some of which essentially strengthen Fitzgerald’s themes, while others compete, establishing contemporary interpretations of the novel.

Within F. Scott Fitzgerald "Babylon Revisited" on man faces forms of modernism and naturalism. Modernism is about changes that occur within society that can be challenging to adapt to. Also, naturalism stresses any and all determination of one's social and environmental forces on individuals lives. This story is about a man named Charlie Wales. He is very handsome and talented "He was thirty-five, and good to look at" (Fitzgerald, 1931/2013, pg. 2166). This handsome man has a negative pass. Charlie Wales was once an alcoholic who lost all of his money in the stock market crash. The following details show how Charlie Wales has fell victim to his society and along with the economy. Despite losing his saving to the stock market crash he also lost

     F. Scott Fitzgerald is known as a writer who chronicled his times. This work has been critically acclaimed for portraying the sentiments of the American people during the 1920s and 1930s. ‘The Great Gatsby’ was written in 1924, whilst the Fitzgeralds were staying on the French Riviera, and ‘Tender is the Night’ was written nearly ten years later, is set on, among other places, the Riviera. There are very interesting aspects of these works, such as the way Fitzgerald treats his so-called heroes, and to what extent we can call them heroic.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the key novels that successfully tells both the lavish lifestyles and the faults of society in the 1920’s. The Great Gatsby is filled with an abundance of similarities to American life, outlining the American dream, and even parts of contemporary society today. However, The Great Gatsby shares underlying similarities with the novel, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. A novel that also told a story of a time in society, revealing the political system during the time and the powers of people in 45 B.C.. With both novels having a commentary of society during two distinct times in history, centered around two overly ambitious

Fitzgerald 's Great Gatsby and Elliot 's The Wasteland are two stories that similarly express the modernist post-war disillusionment. Both stories comment pessimistically on the direction that our world is moving in from the post-war modernist perspective. Both men looked past the roaring twenties, and realized that this time period was actually a moral wasteland. The final paragraphs of The Great Gatsby sum up their mutual lack of faith in American culture to improve.

“The orgastic future [...] year by year recedes before us” and the past consumes us with its “moments of hope and promise and wonder” (Fitzgerald 180; Parr 76). To be human is to be unfulfilled and to long for the unreachable, but such aspirations often prevent one from fully living in the present. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, an obsession with the inaccessible past characterizes the lives of many of those inhabiting a “universe of ineffable gaudiness” (Fitzgerald 99). Using a motif of water, Fitzgerald traces character Jay Gatsby’s relationship with the past, to reveal that those who reside in an acquisitive world and try to escape the past will remain there if they mistake it for a viable future. In the short term, they often recognize and attempt to overcome the shortcomings of their past lives. Should they confuse the past with the future, however, they will cease to make progress on their temporal voyage into the future. Ultimately, these individuals will come to believe in their capability of living in the past, becoming so delusional that they actually end up lingering there forever.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore that Fitzgerald definitely included these aspects for a purpose. Shain claims in F. Scott Fitzgerald that “He used himself so mercilessly in his fiction, there is often a complete fusion between his life and his stories” (6). In addition to the drinking, Fitzgerald also experienced major issues in his relationship with his wife, Zelda. “Memories of Scott” by Ring explains how “He had constantly to put the novel aside to earn quick money for living- for Zelda’s sanitarium bills, for Scottie’s tuition at Vasaar” (19.) However, the mention of this in the story is only more of a reminder, and not a direct similarity. Marion talks about how maybe Charlie could have helped out with Honoria more if he were not in the sanitarium. In addition, she blames her sister’s death on Charlie. Although the correlations may not be exact in some areas, it is clear that he connected some crucial areas of his life that interfered in having a healthy relationship with the women in his life. In order to provide money for his family, he had to make money, and as he earned it, he was exposed to things he shouldn’t have been. At the end of the story, he is told that it was rumored Charlie lost a lot in the crash. He agrees, but he states that he lost everything he wanted in the boom. This story circles around the absent relationship with his wife, and the struggling one he faces with his daughter. He is constantly battling alcoholism, and he is reminded by Honoria’s title of the type of man he must be for her in order to become a better person and father. At the end of Babylon Revisited, Charlie explains that he “was absolutely sure Helen wouldn’t want him to be alone” (156). Fitzgerald could not possibly make it any more obvious that he wrote the story in inspiration of events of his