Response to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"

"Babylon Revisited" is as tragic as it is optimistic, and F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't have written it with more edge and beauty than he did. With reading it brings a question--has Charlie Wales really changed, and does that change mean that he should be allowed to look after his daughter Honoria? Does he deserve this second chance? And actually, what is a second chance?

The "Babylon" that existed for him in Paris years before the story takes place was regrettable, full of mistakes for sure--he drank, he locked his wife out, and he lost a lot of time moving from one party to the next, making it hard to discern between where he started and where he was going. Since then, things have changed, and I think Charlie had definitely changed with them, I mean, how could he have not. His wife has died, he has a daughter who's growing up and becoming her own self, and Paris has shifted from a "Babylon" for the rich and the rich Americans, to a struggling city of average French citizens--nothing has stayed the same, and it clear that Charlie is no exception.

For one, he's no longer a heavy drinker--in fact, he's limited himself to only one drink a day, almost merely just to show his control--some days he doesn't even have his one drink. Way more importantly, though, he wants change. Charlie Wales is choosing to start a new life with his daughter, and he's clearly abandoning his old one--at one point in the story, two of his old drinkings companions show up, and he makes no mistake at kicking they out, away from his new life. In a way, Duncan and Lorraine, his old drinkings companions, really are his "ghosts out of the past" (pg. 1030), representing everything he used know and be, and his rejection and disdain for them in favor of his new life that he wants to start and build.

All this couldn't be a better way of showing Charlie's willingness to change, not to mention showing how much he already has. There's totally no doubt either than Charlie loves his daughter of sure--however the case, then there's the question, though, what it all mean? Does it really mean that he deserves a second chance with Honoria? A second chance to start a new life for him and for her? What is a second chance really?

There are a lot of answers to that question, and few of them are either right or wrong. Like in the song "Please Forgive Me" by musician David Gray, he sings about never having to have to lie, and to never have to say good bye. In a way, I feel he's singing about wanting and waiting for a second chance, or for a first chance--it's hard to discern between the two in his song, which, in a way, is a helluva lot more important than it might seem, because what is a second chance really but just another chance? What I mean is that people are always changing, they never stop, so what's the difference, really, between a first chance and a second, or even a sixth--in the end, they're all the same, because the person being "given" their second chance isn't the same person they were when they had their first.

Therefore, I think that Charlie deserves his chance--maybe not the Charlie from the days of "Babylon", but definitely the Charlie now, the man that he's become, as we know him and as he is through the pages of "Babylon Revisited," as that's the only man being given one.

*Interesting thing here--one of David Gray's most famous tracks is his song "Babylon," off of his 1998 album "White Ladder," which, get this, is the same album to originally feature the track "Please Forgive Me," which is the one I've quoted in this blog. Strangely enough, though, I didn't know this until after I wrote this blog with him in it--crazy mad coincidence, I guess.