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Willa Cather
Vanda Mallo
Keiser University
Babylon Revisited
Charlie Wales is the protagonist of "Babylon Revisited" (Fitzgerald, 1931), a former drunk and self-absorbed party-goer who returns to Paris, the site of his past 1920s decadence, to retrieve his daughter Honoria. Charlie sees his formal life with sober eyes, and is both shocked and appalled by its extravagance. At times he appears to come to terms with his mistakes and its consequences but sometimes it seems as if he misses his old life, not necessarily the heartache, but the exuberance of it, as in the following passage “But it was nice while it lasted. We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us” (Fitzgerald, 1931, …show more content…
Throughout the story Charlie reflects upon his mistakes and understands that some of them are harder to correct than others, especially in regards to his relationship with his sister-in-law. “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material” (Fitzgerald, 1931, pp. 2175).
Another distinguishing feature of the protagonist, is his willingness to change himself for someone he loves. Proving that he is worthy of getting his daughter back has kept him sober and financially stable.
Ultimately, I believe that the most important characteristic, is the protagonist’s ambiguity. Throughout the story he shames his past behavior while sometimes relieving it fondly. He changed to get his daughter back, but places himself in a position that ultimately guarantees that he will lose her. The story starts at the bar where the character has high hopes of getting his daughter back and ends at the bar, with him refusing a second drink. He vows “He would come back some day; they couldn’t make him pay forever. But he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact” (Fitzgerald, 1931, pp. 2178). As the reader, I can’t help but wonder if he will keep his …show more content…
Even though there is no specific plot in “Neighbor Rosicky,” there is a common theme throughout the story, to live a simple life. Modernism literature is about changes in literary form and Cather’s work certainly shows this, incorporating fragments of thought in an effort to capture the flow of the characters’ mental processes. Throughout the story we learn about the main character as he contemplates life, past and present, along with his inevitable death, such as when he reflected over the graveyard and its proximity to his home, “He was awful found of his place, he admitted. He wasn’t anxious to leave it. And it was a comfort to think that he would never have to go farther than the edge of his own hayfield” (Cather, 1228, 123, pp.