Plot Overview

Part I opens in the middle of a conversation between Charlie Wales and Alix, a
bartender at the Ritz. Charlie asks Alix to pass along his brother-in-laws
address to Duncan Schaeffer. The narrator says that Paris and the Ritz bar
feel deserted. Charlie says he has been sober for a year and a half and that
he is now a businessman living in Prague. He and Alix gossip about old
acquaintances. Charlie says hes in town to see his daughter.
Charlie gets in a taxi. The Left Bank looks provincial to him, and he wonders
whether hes ruined the city for himself. The narrator tells us that Charlie is a
handsome thirty-five-year-old. Charlie goes to his brother-in-laws house,
where his daughter, Honoria, jumps into his arms. Marion Peters, his sister-in-
law, greets him without warmth, although his brother-in-law, Lincoln Peters, is
friendlier. In a calculated remark, Charlie boasts about how good his finances
are these days. Lincoln looks restless, so Charlie changes the subject. Marion
says shes glad there arent many Americans left in Paris, and its clear that
she doesnt like Charlie.
After eating dinner with the Peters family, Charlie goes to see a famous
dancer named Josephine Baker, then to Montmartre, where he passes
nightclubs that he recognizes. He sees a few scared tourists go into one club.
He thinks about the meaning of dissipation and remembers the vast sums of
money he threw away. After ignoring a womans advances, he goes home.

Part II begins the following morning. Charlie takes Honoria to lunch. He

suggests going to a toy store and then to a vaudeville show. Honoria doesnt
want to go to the toy store because shes worried theyre no longer rich.
Charlie playfully introduces himself to her as if they are strangers. He
pretends that her doll is her child, and she goes along with the joke. She says
she prefers Lincoln to Marion and asks why she cant live with Charlie.
Leaving the restaurant, they run into Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles,
two of Charlies friends from the old days. Lorraine says she and her husband
are poor now and that she is alone in Paris. They ask Charlie to join them for
dinner, but he brushes them off and refuses to tell them where hes staying.
They see each other again at the vaudeville, and he has a drink with them. In
the cab on the way home, Honoria says she wants to live with him, which
thrills Charlie. She blows him a kiss when she is safely inside the house.

In Part III, Charlie meets with Marion and Lincoln. He says that he wants
Honoria to live with him and that he has changed. He says he drinks one drink
per day on purpose so that he doesnt obsess about it ever again. Marion
doesnt understand this, but Lincoln claims that he understands Charlie.
Charlie settles in for a long fight, reminding himself that his objective isnt to
justify his behavior but to win Honoria back. Marion says that Charlie hasnt
existed for her since he locked Helen, her sister and Charlies wife, out of their
apartment. Charlie says Marion can trust him. As it becomes increasingly
clear that Marion simply doesnt like Charlie, he begins to worry that she will
turn Honoria against him. He stresses that he will be able to give Honoria a
good life and then realizes that Marion and Lincoln dont want to hear about
how much wealthier he is than they are. He craves a drink.

The narrator says that Marion understands Charlies wish to be with his
daughter but needs to see him as the villain. She implies that Charlie was
responsible for Helens death. Lincoln objects. Charlie says that heart trouble
killed Helen, and Marion sarcastically agrees with him. Suddenly giving up the
fight, she leaves the room. Lincoln tells Charlie that he can take Honoria. Back
in his hotel room, Charlie thinks of the way he and Helen destroyed their love
for no good reason. He remembers the night they fought and she kissed
another man; he got home before her and locked her out. There was a
snowstorm later, and Helen wandered around in the cold. The incident marked
the beginning of the end. Charlie falls asleep and dreams of Helen, who
says that she wants him and Honoria to be together.

Part IV begins the next morning. Charlie interviews two potential governesses
and then eats lunch with Lincoln. He says Marion resents the fact that Charlie
and Helen were spending a fortune while she and Lincoln were just scraping
along. In his hotel room, Charlie gets a pneumatique (a letter delivered by
pneumatic tube) from Lorraine, who reminisces about their drunken pranks
and asks to see him at the Ritz bar. The adventures that Lorraine looks back
on with fondness strike Charlie as nightmarish.
Charlie goes to Marion and Lincolns house in the afternoon. Honoria has
been told of the decision and is delighted. The room feels safe and warm. The
doorbell ringsit is Lorraine and Duncan, who are drunk. Slurring their words,
they ask Charlie to dinner. He refuses twice and they leave angry. Furious,
Marion leaves the room. The children eat dinner, and Lincoln goes to check
on Marion. When he comes back, he tells Charlie that the plans have
changed.

In Part V, Charlie goes to the Ritz bar. He sees Paul, a bartender he knew in
the old days. He thinks of the fights that he and Helen had, the people out of
their minds on alcohol and drugs, and the way he locked Helen out in the
snow. He calls Lincoln, who says that for six months, they have to drop the
question of Honoria living with Charlie. Charlie goes back to the bar. He
realizes that the only thing he can do for Honoria is buy her things, which he
knows is inadequate. He plans to come back and try again.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes
THE INESCAPABILITY OF THE PAST

Even though Charlies wilder days have long since passed, hell never be able
to truly escape them. Although he actively tries to avoid reminders of the Paris
he used to know, they nevertheless follow him everywhere. When he goes to
lunch with Honoria, for example, he can find only one restaurant that doesnt
remind him of drunken meals that lasted for hours. When he walks through
Montmartre, old haunts surround him. Even the things that have changed
remind him of his past, simply because the newness of them strikes him as
odd. The scared tourists heading into cafs are pale imitations of the partiers
he and his friends once were, and the once-bustling places that these tourists
frequent are now nearly empty. Charlie would like to put his failed marriage
behind him, but he cannot. Marion constantly reminds him of his mistakes,
which she clings to almost obsessively. The past informs the present: because
of what Charlie did to Helen, he is prevented from living with Honoria. Perhaps
the most ominous figures from the past are Duncan and Lorraine, living
reminders of the bad old days, who still try to follow him wherever he goes.

If Charlie wants to shake off the past, however, some part of him
simultaneously cant let it go. He asks his cabbie to drive to the Avenue de
lOpera, he goes to Montmartre and visits the places he used to frequent, and
he begins and ends the story in the familiar Ritz bar. While these incidents
suggest that the past still haunts Charlie, we cant help thinking that Charlie is
actually looking to be haunted. He must know, consciously or subconsciously,
that visiting the scenes of his former life will fill him with regret and possibly
even longing. Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that Charlie gives
Lincoln and Marions address to Alix, asking him to pass it along to Duncan.
He later ignores Lorraine and refuses to give his hotel address to them, but
his protestations mean nothing because hes already told them where they
can find him. We know that some part of him must want the debauchery of the
old days back in his life, thereby planting the seeds of his own failure.
THE PURITY OF PATERNAL LOVE

Fitzgerald characterizes the love that fathers and daughters feel for each
other as the only pure, unadulterated kind of love in the world. Other types of
love, however passionate or intense they may be, are always complicated by
dislike or mistrust. Charlie and Helen loved each other, for example, but they
tormented and abused each other: Helen kissed other men, they fought, and
Charlie locked her out in a snowstorm. Lincoln and Marion demonstrate
another type of marital love, one thats genuine but strained by financial and
familial difficulties. To some degree, Charlie loves Lincoln and Marion, whom
he still considers family. At the same time, however, he thinks of them as
adversaries, and their mutual distrust of each other makes their love less than
pure. Only Honoria and Charlie love each other in an unadulterated way. They
often speak of their love for each other, and she asks him whether he loves
her more than anyone in the world. Marital and familial love may fall apart with
regularity, but the love between children and parents is the most pure.

Motifs

THE OUTDOORS

Many scenes in Babylon Revisited take place on the streets of Paris, where
people go when theyre lonely or angry. Charlie forces Lorraine and Duncan
out onto the street, for example, when they surprise him at Marion and
Lincolns house, and they leave in a fit of anger. When Charlie wanders
through Montmartre, the nervous tourists and overeager nightclub employees
only make him feel more solitary. Most obviously abandoned to the dangerous
streets is Helen, whom Charlie had locked out after fighting with her. The fact
that Charlie locked her outside during a snowstorm is a particularly cruel
gesture in this story, which characterizes the outdoors as a place of sadness
and danger. Fitzgerald emphasizes the melancholy quality of the outdoors by
contrasting it with the indoors, which he portrays as warm, cozy, and safe. All
the scenes that take place in Marion and Lincolns house, for example,
connote a happy family atmosphere created by responsible adults. When
Charlie finally leaves their house toward the end of the story, he is
appropriately cast back into the lonely streets.

Symbols

THE RITZ BAR

The bar at the Ritz Hotel symbolizes Charlies spiritual home. Charlie is a
wanderer: he no longer lives in America, his birthplace, and we never see him
in Prague, his new home. He visits Marion and Lincolns house as an
interloper, more of a resented outsider than a member of the family. The place
that closest resembles his home, however, is the bar at the Ritz, and the story
begins and ends there, emphasizing its importance to Charlie. Like a real
home, the walls of the Ritz bar have witnessed the changes that have
happened to him. Whereas he once spent many late, drunken nights at the
bar in his wilder days, he now sits there to consume his one customary drink
every day. Charlie and Alix, the bartender, gossip about the people they both
once knew, drinkers and ex-drinkers who have fallen on hard times, just as
two family members might gossip about wayward relatives. One the other
hand, the bar could never be a fulfilling substitute for a real home. As Charlie
sits with Alix at the end of the story, he thinks about how terribly alone he is.
The bar may be the closest thing Charlie has to a home, but its comforts are
inferior in every way to those of an actual household.

Historical Context

The melancholy mood of Babylon Revisited comes partly from the historical period
in which it is set. Fitzgerald is often identified as the voice of the Jazz Age, but in this
story he portrays the postJazz Age world, which is sober and full of
regret. Charlie returns to a Paris that has changed dramatically. In the old days, before
the storys action takes place, Americans like Charlie and Helen were a sort of
royalty, almost infallible because they had money to burn. Like drunken children,
rich Americans ran wild all over the city in the 1920s. Then the American stock
market crashed in 1929, an event mentioned only briefly in the story but one that casts
a pall over its characters. Charlies personal history runs parallel to the course of
history itself. During the Jazz Age, he lived lavishly, giving hundreds of francs to
doormen and thousands of francs to orchestras. He was blindingly drunk most of the
time and pulled childish pranks. He lived a dissipated, crazed life that epitomized the
hedonism of wealthy Americans living in the mid-1920s. Then, just as the stock
market crashed, Charlies alcoholism landed him in a sanitarium. By drawing parallels
between history and Charlies life, Fitzgerald makes Charlie representative of an
entire age.

Important Quotations Explained

1. Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare . . . The
men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine
wasnt real snow. If you didnt want it to be snow, you just paid some money.

These sentences, which come near the end of the story, complicate our
understanding of Helens death. Marion strongly implies that Charlie was
responsible for his wifes demise, and she scoffs at his explanation that Helen
died of heart trouble. Her scornful reaction affects Charlie strongly, but it isnt
clear whether the accusation fills him with anger or guilt. This passage gives
the impression that Charlie blames himself, at least to some degree. At the
zenith of those wild days in 1929, men like Charlie felt like gods. They
imagined that they controlled the entire world, even the weather itself.
Thoughtless actions didnt seem to have real consequences, and it was
inconceivable that someone could be hurt by the cold. You could pay for
everything else, Charlie thinks sarcastically, so of course you could pay to
make real snow imaginary. The bitter tone of this passage, with its angry
repetition of the word snow, suggests that only now does Charlie realize that
such ideas were dangerous.