Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Babylon Revisited- F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitgerald starts off the story as Charlie comes back to Paris to see his daughter. The city is vastly different from what he remembers it being like. The once full and lively streets are empty and quiet. Americans that used to overcrowd this area are nowhere to be found, and nearly all people in the area are from Paris. Charlie and his wife came over from America to party and they spent their newly acquired fortune until it bottomed out after the stock market crash in 1929. Charlie’s daughter Honoria lives with her aunt and uncle, and there is pliable tension between them and Charlie. We later learn that after the death of her mother Helen, Honoria was sent to live with them because Charlie was recovering from alcohol addiction in a sanatorium.  He is sober now and wants his daughter to be a part of his life, and he struggles to gain the trust of her aunt and uncle.

            Charlie’s past haunts him in this short story, and I think that in some way readers can relate to him and how their past influences their present and future.  Charlie views the city differently when he visits from when he lived there. He thinks to himself, “I spoiled this city for myself. I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.” (Fitzgerald 1146) This thought is heart breaking, but also very true. He got caught up in the parties, drinking, drugs, and shenanigans, and before he knew it his marriage was falling apart and he was left with no money. His life is the perfect example of the saying you “don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.

Fitzgerald also plays with the theme of trust, which is something that Charlie must fight to regain from his late wife’s sister and husband.  He must regain their respect and prove that he is a fit father for Honoria in order to start a new life with her.  Marion has issues forgiving Charlie and she has little trust in him after seeing how he locked Helen out in the cold snow when their marriage was on the rocks. After some debate with Marian and Lincoln, it seems as if Charlie will be able to take Honoria to Prague with him. In the end of the story, Charlie’s past haunts him yet again when “old friends” show up drunk looking for a drink at Marian and Lincoln’s home. Charlie had nothing to do with their appearance, but they upset Marian and Charlie must return back to his hotel alone. When all hope seems to be gone, Charlie sits at the bar, devastated from getting his hopes up, but he manages to only have one drink. He has hope for the future, and it leaves the reader with a sliver of hope for Charlie and Honoria.

The Hairy Ape- Eugene O'Neil

The Hairy Ape by Eugene O' Neil

Eugene O'Neil's play The Hairy Ape is one that plays upon class differences and the social divide between the upper class and the working class. In the first few scenes of his work, O'Neil sets the stage describing Yank and the other workers as dirty, half-dressed, strong, and uneducated laborers. Yank stands taller than the others, and he is a man of steel and raw power. Mildred is portrayed as a fragile, delicate,  and clean young woman dressed in white. She lounges on the ship deck with her aunt fighting about her service work and how she wishes to help and connect with the poor. Her elitist aunt replies with "After exhausting the morbid thrills of social service work on New York's East Side- how they must have hated you, by the way, the poor that you made so much poorer in their own eyes!-you are now bent on making your slumming international." (pg 1062-63)

Mildred decides to go under the ship to see the men work, and when she goes down she decides to leave on her white dress. While Yank yells and curses at the whistle blower, Mildred stands horrified in the work room until she nearly faints and is carried away. She says "Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast!" (pg 1067) Yank thought at first that Mildred was a ghost, but he feels insulted, and her comment really makes him "Tink" about who he is and he has somewhat of an identity crisis. O'Neil contrasts the upper class and working class (especially in scene 3) with the stark contrast seen between the artificial Mildred and the animalistic Yank. She dresses in stark white while he is covered head to toe in black coal dust.

Yank wants revenge on Mildred, and he starts a fight with upperclassmen in New York and lands himself in prison. He is confused at first and thinks that he is at the zoo. His fellow inmates tease him but try and tell him that he is in jail. Yanks situation is ironic because he is caged in by what used to be his element: steel. He is infuriated when he also realizes that Mildred's father is a steel tycoon and he gets angry and attempts to escape from prison. He is stopped by guards, but is later released. He is uneducated and lost, and when he asks a man where to go the man answers: "to hell." Yank wanders to the zoo and relates to an ape in his cage, eventually setting him free. The ape kills Yank and puts him into his cage. I think that O'Neil had a purpose ending the play in this way, showing how Yank deteriorated mentally and how the one thing that used to inspire him caged him in the end.