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.