The Lost Generation Analysis

Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” and the “Lost Generation” The word “The Lost Generation” is popularized by Ernest Hemingway, which refers to the young generation of writers after World War I. F. Scoot Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Hart Crane are artists of the “Lost Generation”. There are common characteristics of the artists of “Lost Generation”. They lived in Paris, lost their positions in their lives, addicted to alcohol and have party-centered lifestyles. They are affected by the war and it makes their writing style different from other generations, which makes them unique in the American Literary. Their works are also affected by their unique experience of war and their lifestyles. This is the beginning
of the modernism and like realism. Modernism are focusing on the social problems and make judgments of the American lives (Keshmiri 79). As a famous writer of the “Lost Generation,” Fitzgerald writes about Charlie Wales’s revisited of Paris and his different look of the lifestyle he lived before in “Babylon Revisited”. Fitzgerald has a traditional writing style, which is different from Hemingway and Dospassos, because his opinions of the world are less affected by the war assumption (Keshmiri 82). The common themes of “Lost Generation” literatures such as decadence, gender role, and transformation of life are appeareing on Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited. The most appear theme in the literature works of “Lost Generation” is the decadence and it is also a lifestyle of the writers of the “Lost Generation”. As Bryer, Margolies,and Prigozy states in F. Scott Fitzgerald : New Perspectives, “The textual variants not only belie Fitzgerald’s reputation for careful craftsmanship, but, more startling, also offer contradictory details that confuse a crucial thematic issue: the change in Charlie Wales occasioned by his ability to identify a unifying purpose in his life” (180). In Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie Wales is a man who used to live in Paris. He is drinking and partying very frequently in the past. He returned to Paris as a changed man and his view of Paris and his life before is different. In the beginning of the text, where Charlie says that “he was not really disappointed to find Paris was so empty” indicates that he used to be one of the people who parties all day long and he knows that people are not on the street because they are in the bars or parties. Charlie is not completely changed:
After an hour he left and strolled toward Montmartre, up the Rue Pigalle into the Place Blanche. The rain had stopped and there were a few people in evening clothes disembarking from taxis in front of cabarets, and cocottes prowling singly or in pairs, and many Negroes. He passed a lighted door from which issued music, and stopped with the sense of familiarity; it was Bricktop's, where he had parted with so many hours and so much money. A few doors farther on he found another ancient rendezvous and incautiously put his head inside. Immediately an eager orchestra burst into sound, a pair of professional dancers leaped to their feet and a maître d'hôtel swooped toward him, crying, "Crowd just arriving, sir!" But he withdrew quickly. "You have to be damn drunk," he thought. ( Fitzgerald 678)
He did try to make some changes, but he still cannot avoid his old habits, which nails his failure. Charlie misses the days he has fun in these places and the fun he enjoys partying with other people. He is not actually recovered from being alcoholic and when he gets nervous, he wants to drink. The stock market boom allows Charlie and other American not to work and live decadent lives in Paris (Sutton 165). The similarity in Fitzgerald’s works shows the relationship of different gender roles in that time.
“In The Great Gasby, published in 1925, Scott Fitzgerald writes about a disintegrating American marriage that, despite the gravest of outside challenges-the limitless quest of the romantic lover-and undoubtedly for most of the wrong reasons, nevertheless holds together” (Mentero 587). In “Babylon Revisited,” the decadent life breaks the marriage of Charlie Wales and Helen and takes away his life before. Charlie Wales is a father who wants her daughter’s custody. Even though in the end of the story, he may not win and he is still alone. Charlie Wales’s desire of regaining his child is similar to Gatsby’s desire of regaining Daisy in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Sutton 165). They both hope that by winning the female, they will “recapture a happier, more innocent past and will somehow wipe out the intervening years when the female was not his” (Sutton 165). In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby wants to regain Daisy for his idealist past; even though the narrator tells him that he cannot repeat the past. Charlie Wales tries to regain his daughter to regain the uncomplicated virtues of his life (Sutton 165). He wants to fix his personal mistake and brings back the life before he destroys his marriage, which causes his wife death. Gatsby and Charlie both have a similar ending of losing the female they want. Both stories tell that the past is gone and never be
received (Sutton 166). In “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie dreams about his wife that “She said that he was perfectly right about Honoria and that she wanted Honoria to be with him. She said she was glad he was being good and doing better. She said a lot of other things-very friendly things-but she was in a swing in a white dress, ad swinging faster and faster all the time, so that at the end he could not hear clearly all that she said” (Fitzgerald 685). The dream that Charlie hear Honoria’s mother says he is qualified to have Honoria with him and he has become a good person besides an alcoholic is just a dream. It is a hint that Charlie will not regain her daughter because dream will be gone when he wakes up and never comes true. So does Gatsby, when he talks to Daisy, who is in a white dress, he finds that she leaving him in the “dead dream” (Sutton 166). It seems that he did try his effort to make up the times with his daughter and know her more. The view of the death of Charlie’s wife is different in different gender. Lincoln says that he does not think Charlie is responsible for her death and Charlie thinks she died of heart trouble (Fitzgerald 684). However, Marion spokes “Yes, heart trouble.” In a different meaning, and she blames Charlie for Helen’s death (Fitzgerald 684). Charlie still thinks that he is not responsible for Helen’s death, which he once locks Helen out of the house in a snow day. Charlie has treated Helen badly. When Lincoln sees Marion hurried from the room, he says that “You know how strongly she feels…When a woman gets an idea in her head” and Charlie replies him “Of course.” (Fitzgerald 684). This all indicates that women are treated badly. The transformation of Charlie Wales’s life is also a transformation of Fitzgerald.
Charlie Wales tries to change his life but he is paying for what he has done in the past. He lost her daughter’s custody because his previous life and now he tries to win it back. The story of Charlie Wales is also a story of Fitzgerald and people who live in that time period. They are paying for their wasteful lives and irresponsible behavior. In the end, Wales says that “He wasn’t young any more, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself” (Fitzgerald 689). He has all these nice thoughts and imaginations of him living with her daughter happily, but all of these are not going to come true and he will live with these alone. His mistakes cannot be fixed and he is still paying for it. His failure of getting her daughter back is determined at the beginning of the story where he leaves Tom’s address for Duncan at the Ritz bar. When he almost gets his daughter back, his friends he used to get drunk with come to the guardian’s house and it reminds the guardians how he used to be (Fitzgerald 687). It is obvious that Charlie loves Honoria and that is the reason why he continually refuses the second drinks (Bryer 194). However, Bryer states that “His reluctance to accept his share of the blame for the destructive period in his past that placed Honoria in the custody of the Peterses, himself in a sanitarium and his wife, Helen, in an early grave, undercuts his
apparent reformation” (194). He only changes his behavior, but not his treatment of women and his attitude towards his past. He does not accept what he has done makes him keep paying for his sin in the future. Fitzgerald is more aware about the affect of money on people’s lives that can bring to people than other author in that time. Another reason he does not regain Honoria because her guardians are jealous for his hardworking after the crash and being wealthy. It is based on Fitzgerald’s personal experience of growing up as a poor boy in a rich man’s world (Keshmiri 80). Gatsby and Charlie both work hard to get wealthy and their final goal is to regain the love they lost and the repeat the past. Keshmiri states that in Fitzgerald’s stories, most of the “central character undergo processes of self-assessment (Amory Blaine, for example), or they judge others (Nick Carraway), or they are judged by Fitzgerald himself, who constantly measured the behavior of characters against implicit standards of responsibility, honor, and courage” (80). In “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie Wales’s behavior is judged by his brother and sister-in-law and other characters in the stories. Based on their views of Charlie, the readers can determine the changes happen on Charlie’s behavior. Keshmiri states that “For Fitzgerald, money was an important part of the American Dream because it provided not just luxuries but also opportunities unavailable to less affluent people” (81). Charlie is man who is luck on the market and gets rich again, and then he wants to achieve his uncomplicated dream of regaining his daughter. In the end of the story, Charlie Wales asks how long he has to live alone and pay for his mistakes. The decadence lifestyles, the different treatments over different genders, and the transformation of lifestyles are all coming from F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s personal experiences. So do the Americans, how long will they realize their own mistakes and pay for them. The goal of all these works is trying to remind people who lived in wasteful lives to wake and adjust their lives before it is too late. It tries to remind them to fix their personal mistakes before it is too late. All these “Lost Generations” should stop wasting their lives, do something meaningful, and do not wait until it is too late to make changes. And to those people who want to achieve the American Dreams, they shall stay awake and not lose themselves in the decadence.