Memories Revisited?

As I was reading Fitzgerald’s story Babylon Revisited I came to the conclusion that this was not only well written but that it had to be based in some way on a personal experience. Something about this story seemed so real that I knew it could not just be another fictional piece. So I quickly went back to the biography of Scott Fitzgerald to see if anything written there would tell me more about his motives behind writing this story. It revealed two things. The first being that in his younger years he lived a very colorful lifestyle, he went to all night parties, drank, and pursued any means of pleasure available. The second thing that it revealed was that Babylon Revisited was written immediately after the stock market crashed and is a personal national story. This story was an anecdote for the entire nation showed through one family and how it related to the entire nation.

I was quite relieved to know that I had in fact been correct about it being a personal story but this also made me a little confused. Was it only a personal story because of the stock market crashing or was there more to it? After further research I found that Fitzgerald’s wife (married since 1920) struggled their whole marriage from her husband’s alcohol problem which led to her physical and mental exhaustion. She was admitted to a sanatorium in the 1930’s. Finding out that he was an alcoholic helped me understand the story because it gave me an understanding of Charlie’s struggle with alcohol being much more authentic due to him experiencing it himself. Upon finding out all of his marital problems it made this story much clearer. I felt it was Fitzgerald writing part of his own story. The guilt placed upon Charlie’s shoulders for his wife’s death could have been Fitzgerald’s guilt for causing his wife so many problems.

Once I knew the reasons behind Fitzgerald’s motivation to write this story it was easier for me to see the message found within the story. The main point I saw was that past mistakes, no matter how hard you try, cannot always be fixed. I know this is probably a harsh statement but Charlie portrays the father who has made many mistakes throughout the entire story and he is trying to work his way back to redemption only to find that it is not possible; even though he was not an alcoholic anymore, even though he had a governess ready for his daughter, even though he had the money with which to take care of her, and even though he was emotionally ready. He and the other responsible adults could not get past the image of who he was. The image of a lousy, drunk, out of control, murdering (in the eyes of the sister) father never left his side and because of that image in the end he is still at square one. He is left just as alone at the end of the story as in the beginning and that is what is so complicated about this story. You can see from the very beginning that he is devoted to his daughter and to staying on the right path but that image of him in the past never lets him get away. At the end he almost gets his daughter back but his past, Lorraine the woman he does not want to be associated with, comes back to haunt him and takes away all his hopes for the future. So I felt that the story was trying to remind us that we may think that hard work and effort can erase the past but in reality sometimes it comes back to bite us.