The Twilight World of Babylon Revisited Anonymous College

At first glance, “Babylon Revisited” seems to carry the same them as The Great Gatsby of the dangers of idealizing the past to the point of destroying the present. However, “Babylon Revisited” adds an extra layer of meaning by firmly placing the ambiguity between the hopes for the future and the sins of the past squarely in the realm of alcoholism. Through the characters, Fitzgerald depicts a drinking culture where the parties have lost their joy and the hangovers have become the de facto lifestyle. The characters of “Babylon Revisited” live in a twilight world of desperation and regret, too old to enjoy the drinking but incapable of truly changing their ways.

Charlie is the character that most resembles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s biography, a former expatriate who spent the 1920s in Paris, drinking and writing and dealing with an unhinged wife. There is an irony to the characterization since Charlie is a shell of a human being holding onto the past, whereas Fitzgerald’s writing had become much deeper and more mature in his post-Paris years. Charlie’s appearance is described as “He was thirty-five, and good to look at. The Irish mobility of his face was sobered by a deep wrinkle between his eyes. As he rang his brother-in-law's bell...