The Moral Points in Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited

The plot of “Babylon Revisited” moves through time and space, and its movement conveys its theme. This theme suggests that the past and the future meet in the present. Fitzgerald dramatically expresses Bergson's idea that duration is the continuous progress of the past which forces into the future. In the story, Charlie Wales relives the disastrous events of his past in a few days, and he realizes in the brilliant final scene in the Ritz Bar that time is irreversible, that the empty glass in front of him is the emptiness of his whole life, past, present, and future. At the beginning of the story, Charlie intends to shuck away the memory of his past through the recovery of his lost child, but the actuality of the past has nullified his prospect from the start. Charlie’s unfulfilled longing for his family suggests that an emotional debt racked up over times of reckless abandon and indulgence without restraint will eventually have to be repaid. By following Charlie’s storyline, the moral point the story makes becomes clear - excess and immoderate behaviour will eventually lead to a collapse.

The very title of the story suggests the movement between time and space, and similarly, the rest of the story also focuses a great deal on the concept of the passage of time. Throughout Part I of the story Charlie is continually trying to turn back the clock. During dinner at the Peters’ he looks across at Honoria and feels that he “wanted to jump back a whole generation”. Similarly, throughout Part I, all references to time are of the past. There is a shift of emphasis in time in Part II. Charlie wants to forget the horrors of his past, so much so that he deliberately choses a restaurant that is “not reminiscent of champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at teo and ended in a blurred vague twilight”. Charlie wakes up to another 'bright, crisp day' as Part IV of the story opens. Separating past and present for a moment, Charlie looks to the future, believing for an instant that the past doesn't determine the future: 'He made plans, vistas, futures for Honoria and himself”. But this glimpse into the future is quickly thwarted by a glance backward at past visions: 'Suddenly he grew sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made'. Seeing the future as not quite real and the past as a crushed dream, Charlie thinks of the present: 'The present was the thing — work to do and someone to love'.

Some argue that one’s past is entirely inescapable, Bryant Mangum claims that Charlie’s 'imprudent past' prescribes his failure, and Jeffrey Meyers argues that Charlie is 'captured and enslaved by his past', he is 'irrevocably trapped by his own past'. The power of this story, however, does not lie in this easily perceived portrayal of human beings caught up in the past. Its power lies in its probing of human beings' relation to that past.