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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Age, Development, and Identity
Reputation, Gossip, and Scandal
Expectations and Acceptance
Support and Caretaking
Summary
Analysis
Roger Button makes his way through Baltimore on his way to the hospital. It’s 1860, and his wife has just given birth to their first child. Mr. Button hopes this child will be a boy who will follow in his own footsteps, perhaps attending Yale University when the time comes.
Right away, it’s clear that Mr. Button has high hopes about what it will be like to have a child. For one, he wants this child to be a boy, perhaps suggesting that he’s eager to pass on the family name (which, at least in 1860, would mean he’d have to have a son). The fact that he wants this son to carry on his own legacy at Yale University also implies that Mr. Button wants to make sure his family’s prestigious reputation remains in place. It seems, then, that Mr. Button is quite invested in his own social status, meaning that his child will undoubtedly have to live up to his lofty expectations.
Themes
Literary Devices
These excited thoughts quickly slip away, though, when Mr. Button encounters Doctor Keene outside the hospital and learns that something has gone wrong. Doctor Keene barks that Mr. Button should see for himself if he’s so eager to know whether his child is a girl or a boy. He then angrily departs, muttering that his reputation is at stake and that he never wants to see anyone from Button’s family again.
Like Mr. Button, Doctor Keene is concerned with his status—in particular, he’s worried about what associating with the Buttons and their child could mean for his career. He is so preoccupied with his professional reputation that he doesn’t seem to care what’s wrong with the Buttons’ child or how he could best comfort Mr. Button in this moment.
Themes
Inside the hospital, a flustered nurse directs Mr. Button upstairs, failing to conceal her terror and anxiety. Another terrified nurse takes him to the nursery, though not before reproachfully saying that the hospital’s reputation will never recover from the events of that morning. When Mr. Button finally gets a look at his child, he understands why everyone is so upset: stuffed uncomfortably into a crib sits an old man who looks roughly 70 years old. This, the nurse tells Mr. Button, is his newborn son.
The nurses behave with the same contempt as the doctor, further illustrating how focused people in this society are on preserving their reputation. In this case, the nurses are nervous about the hospital’s reputation, and this overrides any empathy they might otherwise show Mr. Button, who could undoubtedly use a little kindness. Instead of trying to ease the shock he surely feels upon discovering that his son looks like a 70-year-old man rather than a baby, the nurses fixate on their own interests, demonstrating that obsessing over things like reputation can make people less compassionate and kind.
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Literary Devices
In an old, cranky voice, Mr. Button’s son addresses him directly. If Button really is his father, the man-child demands, he should take him home immediately, since he finds the hospital dreadful. The nurse also wants Mr. Button to take his son away as fast as possible, but Button is mortified by the idea of being seen in public with this decrepit old man.
What’s surprising about this moment—other than the fact that Mr. Button’s son is a talking newborn with an old man’s body—is that Mr. Button reacts the exact same way that Doctor Keene and the nurses reacted. He doesn’t feel sad about his son’s unique condition, nor does he worry about whether or not his son is going to be all right. Instead, he immediately worries what people will think about him if he’s seen in public with this man-child. From the very beginning of their relationship, then, Mr. Button fails to give his son the unconditional love and support that most parents automatically show their children.
Themes
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The idea of walking through the reputable neighborhoods of Baltimore with his son is so devastating that Mr. Button briefly wishes the child had been born Black, so he could sell him at the slave market. Pushing this disturbing thought from his mind, he rushes to a nearby clothing store to buy his son something respectable to wear.
Mr. Button is so afraid of damaging his reputation that he has the heartless, racist thought that everything would be easier if he could sell his son into slavery. The extreme nature of this desire reveals just how desperate Mr. Button is to find a way out of caring for his son. Once again, he thinks more about his own status in society than about how to be a good father, apparently unable to show his son any empathy.
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