Babylon Revisited Themes

“Babylon Revisited” takes place one year after the stock market crash of 1929, in the early years of the Great Depression. Charlie Wales revisits Paris, the city where he and his wife lived lavishly during the height of the market boom of the 1920s, only to find that the bars and hotels he once frequented are all but deserted, “the big party” having come to a crashing halt. Fitzgerald portrays the relative austerity of life…

In the aftermath of his catastrophic recklessness during the market boom of the 1920s, Charlie has begun to rebuild his life. He’s no longer interested in the frivolous relationships that once amused him, for he realizes now that they come and go like money. His sole focus has become, instead, securing a home and a family for himself. As such, the central tension in “Babylon Revisited” is the question of whether Charlie Wales’ sister-in-law, Marion…

In “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie’s life is in shambles as a direct consequence of his abuse of alcohol. Although the story deals directly with other forms of immoderation and vice—including greed and promiscuity—Fitzgerald uses the story of Charlie’s struggle with alcoholism to encapsulate his moral point about immoderate behavior inevitably leading to collapse. In this way, Charlie’s story echoes the economic cycle of “boom and bust” that led to the Great Depression, which serves as…