Existentialism in “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgeralds fiction presents not besides the magic of the retire Age provided besides its immorality, materialism, and degradation of the human spirit. While Fitzgerald was believably not judgeing to specifically present empiricism in his over engages, Finkelstein describes Fitzgeralds work as having an existential theme F. Scott Fitzgerald was of this milieu, and at the same time critically detached from it. He expressed its sound-boiled, disillusi championd attitude through the confer use of alienated imagery (171).He manages to present the existential theme of frenzy along with other existential issues the characters in his fiction characterize the existential ideas of the pixilatedity of life, the absolute emancipation of choice, and living with the consequence of ones choices. In Babylon Revisited, the freedom of choice leads the characters to exploit wealth and freedom and, at long last, to regret aside actions and set about to draw off up for the abu se of this freedom. In Babylon Revisited the reader scarcet end watch over the absurdity of life through the rise, fall and rebuilding of Charlie Wales.He chooses to drink and throw off all his money. He loses everything in the transmit market crash still attempts to rebuild his life. Charlie is distraught over the tragic loss of his married woman scarce realizes that he must suffer the consequences of his prior actions.Regaining custody of his daughter Honoria serves as a symbol that Charlie has regained pick up of his life. This paper presents the ideas of existentialism as they don to Babylon Revisited. The sterling(prenominal) tenet of existentialism in Babylon Revisited is that life is absurd because there is no true meaning.Individuals must create meaning therefore they atomic number 18 constantly searching for themselves. Charlie Wales was searching for his true meaning and do galore(postnominal) choices that led to bad consequences. The supreme absurdity in this story is that Charlie excites the remedy decision to turn his life around, but because he must follow with his consequences, he fails to regain custody of his daughter. Although Charlie believes he has moved beyond his preliminary profligate behavior, his sister-in law does not, and she makes the decision to withhold his daughter from him.The most absurd part is that Charlie is better suited now to w be care of his daughter but Marion manages to remain in control of the situation. He works hard to build his life back up but one casualty (that reflects his medieval life) turns everything upside d proclaim.Charlie Wales made some choices that led to bad consequences. The ultimate absurdity in this story is that even though Charlie has made the undecomposed decision to turn his life around, he must live with the consequences of his old decisions and fails to regain custody of his daughter.The absurdity here deals with the fact that Charlies experiences run unrepentant 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 sequent (that reflects his last(prenominal) 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 beget 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 bygone, 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 manpowert that destroys the entire effort to give birth his daughter back.The reader, therefore, can never truly have intercourse how big of a role Charlie plays in his own downfall. He lives, as we all do, in an absurd macrocosm and this absurdi ty magnifies the impact of even the smallest decision. The existential idea of free encorporate trust is important in Babylon Revisited. Sartre postulates a cin one casept of being-in-itself that corresponds to one phenomenal 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 countersink of desires shared by all men that dispose us to task one kind of values to the exclusion of others or to give being-in-itself one kind of meaning rather than another (Olson 133). Each individual is short free.Charlie Wales exercised his free will prior to Helens death in a series of wasteful actions that Fitzgerald presents as having a connection to the biblical idea of Babylon. The literary intersectionions of the Fathers of the Church describe Babylon as the ancient center of luxury and sin (Baker 270).Fitzgerald d evelops the Babylon motif by presenting Charlies actions as catering to vice and waste (215). Here, Fitzgeralds work can be seen as assimilating Nietzsches idea that God is deadened and each individual must be the god of himself in a world without a God (Lavine 325).Since the existentialist mentality has as its land the c erstpt 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 eitherone else responsible. Not until afterward the stock market crash does Charlie realize the consequences of his actions and feel the guilt of those consequences. He realizes that, wish well 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 unt il he accepts the consequences of his past. Charlie Wales stick outs the penitence for his choice to drink and live the life of Babylon (Eble 42).He realizes that he must pay the price It money had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an go to destiny that he might not ring the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would al looks 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 twain 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 i mportant change that Charlie makes.His main mapping is to regain custody of Honoria. Charlie feels as if he has nonrecreational the price for his past choices and has sufficiently recovered enough to look after Honoria himself. He tells Marion and capital of Nebraska that he is anxious to subscribe a home and anxious to have Honoria in it.He states that things have changed radically with him (Fitzgerald 220). The store of Helen drives Charlie to work hard and make himself a better person. He is working to get Honoria not only for his own sake, but for the sake of his dead wife.Fitzgerald is showing the sort of efficacy in Charlie that the reader does not see in Marion. Charlie has learned to control his drinking. When Marion finds out he had been in a bar before approaching to her flat, she chides him. He responds, I take one drink every good 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 t aste 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 make outs it will be operose to persuade Marion to permit 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(prenominal) chemical element of Charlies recovery that Fitzgerald addresses is his renewed relationship with his daughter.Fitzgerald makes it obvious in the stock of the novel that Honoria was not the first thing on the mind of her parents during their Babylon geezerhood. When the barkeeper asks why he is in town and Charlie responds that he is in capital of France to see his daughter, the barman replies questioningly, Oh-hYou have a little girl? (211). psyche 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 disturbion the scenes in which Charlie tentatively establishes contact with Honoria.He buys her toys and takes her to the circus, creating once 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 excessively 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 perpetually (Fitzgerald 230). Sartre believes that there are moments of anguish when lif e loses its meaning when the objects that formerly displace our attention fade into oblivion and the desires that had previously guided our conduct front vain or petty (Olson 131).This creates an ugliness in the world to which the great unwashed must react. These moments of anguish in Babylon Revisited occur 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 crowd who had help oneselfed them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago (Fitzgerald 217). In a foreshadowing of the more crucial intrusion 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 outdoors forces tha t affect his life that he cannot control (Cooper 52). later on 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 and 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 gain 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 needs 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 door 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 sober they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now because they wanted to draw 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). empiric 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 lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have himself. He was absolutely legitimate Helen wouldnt have wanted him to be so alone (Fitzgerald 230).Babylon Revisited opens in the Ritz bar, a symbolic prison for those trapped in Charlies lifestyle. Charlie spent many nights in the prison of the Ritz bar, when he was in his prime party era. Charlie drinks himself into a nuthouse before he begins to come out of the prison of alcoholism.The story because 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 because his past of solitude finds him. The intrusions lead to his ultimate loneliness again (Griffith 237).He is seance 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 sno w 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 prison 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 churchman 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 cowardly that his own irresponsibility will pass to his daughter, Charlie tries to wipe out the past so it will not affect Honoria. LeVot states, A great curl of protectiveness went over him. He thought he knew what to do for her.He believed in character, he wa nted to jump back a whole generation and trust in character again as the eternally valuable 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 oft rescued 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 some(prenominal) 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, unlike 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 condensed Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald mod Approaches in Criticism. Madison, Wisconsin U of Wisconsin P, 1982. 269-277.Bruccoli, Matthew J. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur. New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.Finkelstein, Sidney. Existentialism and estrangement 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/Heming way 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 Fitzgerald and the Art of Social Fiction. New York St. Martins, 1980.