The Dead Cannot Be Dead : Ways of Mourning in Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"(Tohoku Review of English Literature)

Charlie Wales, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "Babylon Revisited," struggles with his past debts and moral troubles. During the economic bubble of the 1920s, Charlie and his wife led decadent, extravagant lifestyles. By the end of the decade, however, the bubble burst and their lives changed. The alcohol debilitated Charlie, and his wife passed away as a result of heart trouble. There are many things in Charlie's past that he must come to terms with. Although we see the different reasons for the difficulties Charlie faces in each stage of his reconciling process, the story continuously deals with the difficult relationship between the protagonist and his past problems. There are similarities between Fitzgerald's own life and the plot of "Babylon Revisited." In "Author's House," which was part of the trio of autobiographical pieces he wrote for Esquire, Fitzgerald reveals ambivalent feelings toward dead people; he both feared them and longed for them. Because of his strong relationships with the departed, Fitzgerald seemed to always feel their presence around him. Interestingly, the narrator of "Author's House" explains to us why he became a writer: his older sisters died before he was born, and this loss compelled him to become a novelist. These aspects of "Author's House" are clearly linked to Fitzgerald's own relationship with the dead and their influence upon him. This paper offers a new perspective on Fitzgerald's story "Babylon Revisited" by identifying how the protagonist and Fitzgerald mourn the dead. Here, we can observe various similarities between the two. One similarity is that both have ambiguous feelings about the dead. Although they both need to mourn the dead, they cannot do so because they have no access to the departed. As "Author's House" shows, Fitzgerald knew he had to assume the task of mourning his sisters from his mother. However, he could not do so because when he took over the task, the sisters and mother were already dead. As a result, his mourning could not reach the dead and therefore had to be suspended. However, because Fitzgerald and Charlie Wales suspend the dead in an ambiguous state, the departed are never completely dead. As a result, the dead frequently burst into the world of the living and torment them. The protagonist's old friends-referred to as "ghosts out of the past" (622) - disturb his plans to restore his life. Moreover, his dead wife causes him to fail to get his daughter back. Living with the dead - this was the destiny of both Charlie and Fitzgerald himself.