Babylon Revisited

 Babylon Revisited is a story about a man who returns to Paris after battling alcoholism to collect his daughter, who is living with is late wife's sister (Marion) and husband. I really liked this story. The ending seemed kind of heartbreaking, but at the same time it seemed validated. I really enjoy the writing style and how Fitzgerald seems to keep his biases of how he feels about the main character out of the text and just lays it all out there for us to make our own conclusion.

In class we are going to be discussing this story and the question: Does Charlie deserve to have his child back? I found that throughout the story I struggled with my empathy for Charlie. He seems to be doing good, dealing with life and the stress of building up his financial security after the crash of '29 brought him to the bottom (of a liquor bottle)... but once I looked deeper I found I wasn't too certain of his recovery.

First off, when we are introduced to this character he is trying to find his old friends. That is the biggest red flag for me. If he is trying to better his life and start anew, why try so hard to find these people? They represent his past and how horrible he used to be. He ends up giving Alix (The bartender I think) Marion's address so that he could pass it along to one of his old friends, Duncan. Later in the story when Duncan and another of Charlie's friends show up at Marion's home, drunk and loud, Charlie is extremely upset and completely denies the fact that he wanted Duncan to find him.
Secondly, I found it kind of odd that he is a recovery alcoholic yet still has one drink a day. He says it is so it won't overtake him again, but come on... If I just recently quit chain smoking the last thing that would be good for me is having a cigarette, let alone one a day. It seems like he is just a "functioning" alcoholic. He still needs to drink, so he limits it to one a day that way he can feel okay about the drink, while maintaining the facade of being clean and sober and completely healthy.
Lastly, towards the end of the story we find Charlie having a stressful time and going to the bar. A lot. He only orders his one drink and denies another on two separate occasions, but he is playing with fire here. He could easily fall back in to the same pattern and the scary thing about this is that he could fall back with a child in his care.

 Fitzgerald's writing style can be particularly frustrating in this story. He doesn't allow you to take a certain side. He explains throughout that Charlie is rather eager to change his ways, but then he shows us all of these elements and small little details which makes it hard for me to have empathy for Charlie.

At the end of the story Marion rejects Charlie's request to have his child back. This is sad because he clearly loves his daughter and his daughter is very eager to be with him. I do not know if I am relieved, though. Part of me feels that he could relapse in to this habit of drinking again and another part of me feels that if he had his daughter with him he would be more likely to stay sober. This is the frustrating path I am sure most readers went down and I am pretty excited for Tuesday's class to hear everyone's opinion on the subject.


Stray thoughts: Babylon is a city in the Bible known for sin. Paris is Charlie's Babylon and he is returning to the city of his sins.

In the Land of the Free

In the Land of the Free is a story about two Chinese immigrants, Lae Choo and Hom Hing, who come to California for a better opportunity. When Lae Choo finds out she is pregnant, she goes back to China so that her and Hom Hing's child can be born in their native land. Lae Choo's return back to the United States is delayed when Hom Hing's parents become sick, causing her to stay and look after them. When his parents die, Lae Choo returns. When she gets off the boat to greet her husband the officers refuse to let her leave with her son. The problem is that when they first filed their immigration papers they didn't have a child, so he does not have proper identification to be allowed to stay in America. He is then taken away from then until they get word from D.C. that he is legally allowed to be with his parents. When things seemed to not progress, James Clancy, a lawyer that Hom Hing knows, offers to help them get their son back to them for a large sum of cash, which Choo and Hing obviously do not have. Lae Choo, so distraught, offers this man all of her fine jewelry as payment.  Confirmation finally comes from D.C. and Lae Choo is very eager to go pick her son up from the missionary of which he was staying. When they meet, her child says, "Go' way! Go 'way!"

                                                         

This is really sad to me. They have legally done everything to be part of this country and yet they have to wait for a letter from all the way across the other side of the United States? This isn't like today, they didn't have fax machines or anything, this took 10 months, which probably felt like 10 years in the mind of a mother. I don't see why they couldn't have stayed with their child, or perhaps the Customs Officer could have made record of this and allowed Little One to stay with his mother and just have sent them a letter when they needed to come back to straighten this out. This is just one example of how badly immigrants were treated in this time in history. Even though they have done everything to be true and right to a country with strict laws on immigration, they did not seem to receive the same kind of respect, or dignity.  The lawyer also took advantage of them. He knew they wanted this desperately so he saw an opportunity to make money. This is also a prime example of what was going on in this time. Here we have Chinese immigrants who just want to make an honest living and because of their lack of knowledge of how the system works, they are completely helpless. I also think that it is funny that they heard no word on their son until money was involved. This says something about the United States and is still true today. Money talks. Because of the way they were discriminated and treated, their son did not even remember who his mother was and that is utterly heartbreaking.

Blog Post 1: The Other Two

Hello! If you are reading this I assume you are either my teacher or a fellow student from my American Literature II class. Because this is my first blog post I really have no idea how I want to tackle this thing as a whole, but I think I will just wing it. Thank you for reading!

The story I want to talk about in this blog is Edith Wharton's "The Other Two" because I have a lot I want to say. The Other Two is essentially a story about four central characters in the early 1900s coming from three different social situations. We have Mr. Waythorn and Mrs. Waythorn (Alice), Gus Varick and Mr. Haskett. Mr. Waythorn is from the high class of society, Alice is from low class but due to her marriage is now high class, Gus Varick is of the middle class and Mr. Haskett is of the low class. Alice has married all of 'em. Her first husband was Mr. Haskett, where Alice married in to her born class, had a child called Lilly and eventually divorced, marrying up the class chain to Varick...Who which she also later divorced. .We fall upon these characters right after Waythorn and Alice are married. Lilly, Alice's daughter, has fallen ill with typhoid and is bedridden. Her father, Mr. Haskett has weekly visits with his daughter and due to these circumstances has requested to see her in her own bed, in the home of Mr. Waythorn. I hope that is enough background information to start us off, so here we go.

Throughout the story we see Alice's exes and current husband interact which brings me to the question brought up in class that I would like to address: Does this story have a happy ending? I would argue that it does. The ending has all of these characters in one room together having tea. This sounds pretty boring until you consider the time period of which it was written. How often have you heard of lower, middle and high class men sitting around sharing tea in the early 1900s? Probably almost never. This is why I think the story has a happy ending. If these men did not have Alice they would never be in this situation. Waythorn would never invite a low class citizen like Haskett in to his home for a cup of tea. It was just not kosher back in those times. But here we are, due to the fact that they all at once married this lady, are sitting in the same room together. It is a community that back in those times never happened. Lower class men would talk with other lower class men, middle class men would talk with middle class men and so on. It shows that all of these classes of gentlemen can coexist due to this common ground, which is Alice.  I think that through Wharton's writing we see a sense of progression between these classes. I think it is her way of showing us that in her mind these classes do not define a person and we shouldn't limit ourselves by turning others away because doing so limits us from becoming a more well rounded, mature society. I like that.