As life continues it is simple to watch, as you will recollect on past events that permanently become apart of your memory. An individual’s past will always have consequences for the future, whether they worked hard to achieve a goal or created a remorseful mistake. The enjoyable experiences will tend to bring smiles and laughter, usually only positively affecting the future, while the wicked ones will bring regret and frustration. Usually a rotten past will affect life ahead by inhibiting an individual or emotionally corroding them. This is evident in Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” as the development of Charlie Whales presents the inevitable to escape the past. In the beginning of the novel Charlie revisits a familiar city from
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Being around his daughter and sister in law are what cause his regretful mistake to linger, the death of his wife. As he makes future plans for him and his daughter it causes him to grow “sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made” (Fitzgerald 260). This shows planning ahead for a new life with his daughter even brings him to his past remembering his wife. He grows sad as the regret and sorrow dawn on him prohibiting his happiness to gleam. As he is furthering the process of obtaining his daughter the past is directly planted into his face as Marion says, “Ill never forget the morning Helen knocked at more door, soaked to the skin and shivering and said you’d locked her out” (Fitzgerald 258). This causes a great uproar to his emotional state as “he gripped the sides of the chair,” showing much anger and anguish (Fitzgerald 258). When attempting to create a new life, it is the past that appears during the process and what is capable of prohibiting him to move on. It is not until later after we understand Charlie’s full character that it’s the presence of his family that has him continuously think of his wife. He will struggle always struggle to escape the past as he plans to be with his daughter, which will continuously plant the image of his dead wife in his
Being around his daughter and sister in law are what cause his regretful mistake to linger, the death of his wife. As he makes future plans for him and his daughter it causes him to grow “sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made” (Fitzgerald 260). This shows planning ahead for a new life with his daughter even brings him to his past remembering his wife. He grows sad as the regret and sorrow dawn on him prohibiting his happiness to gleam. As he is furthering the process of obtaining his daughter the past is directly planted into his face as Marion says, “Ill never forget the morning Helen knocked at more door, soaked to the skin and shivering and said you’d locked her out” (Fitzgerald 258). This causes a great uproar to his emotional state as “he gripped the sides of the chair,” showing much anger and anguish (Fitzgerald 258). When attempting to create a new life, it is the past that appears during the process and what is capable of prohibiting him to move on. It is not until later after we understand Charlie’s full character that it’s the presence of his family that has him continuously think of his wife. He will struggle always struggle to escape the past as he plans to be with his daughter, which will continuously plant the image of his dead wife in his