Zusammenfassung der Ressource
F. Scott Fitzgerald "Babylon Revisited" 1931
- Concept of Time
- Form
- Short story
- Does not allow for full development - means that reader is active in filling in details
- immediacy of dialogue creates an
instantly personal tone & connection
with reader
- Structure is created through chapters
- Suggestion of conventional story
- Time is constantly referred to
- huge difference between past and present
- Lorraine & Duncan
- Charlie is becoming aware that he is
running out of time - his daughter is
growing up & losing innocence
- Nevertheless, time is still stagnated and Charlie attempts to postpone reality
- "he would send her lots of things tomorrow"
- "they couldn't make him pay forever"
- Loss of childhood innocence
- "She was already an individual with a code of her own, and charlie was more and more absorbed by the desire of putting a little of himself into her
- before she crystallized utterly"
- "Well you brought me this doll...And I've got lots of things. and we're not rich any more."
- Represents the distortion of time & the consequences of his actions are highlighted
- links to post-war (WW!&WW2) images of child deaths & combat
- Children loosing innocence too soon
- Depiction of America
- Past
- representative of Charlie's past
- past is still hindering him from fully being able to grasp the present/future (Honoria)
- "Sudden ghosts out of the past"
- Haunting & unwelcome
- "Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare...The men
who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine
- wasn't real snow/ If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money."
- distortion of reality
- financial gain was in parallel with emotional loss
- refers to "twenty-nine" - beginning of the depression
- very different view to most depression era texts
- letter is signed: "Always devotedly, Lorraine"
- past will "always" be an obstacle for Charlie
- Future
- Honoria
- Children as the future - need for the next generation
- Compatible contrast with My Antonia for exam question
- My Antonia is a relatively long novel which slowly introduces characters & settings
- My Antonia view the past as a happier, more innocent time
- Charlie is constantly haunted by his past.
- Both assert personal tones
- Jim Burden's memoirs in "My Antonia"
- Omniscient narrator in
"Babylon Revisited" but
becomes very personal
through heavy dialogue
content