Essay One: Initiations

Darcy Smittenaar

Ms. Holton

EN216-ONL1

February 18, 2013

Initiation in Progress

Although Charlie in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” is full-grown and has a child of his own, he has not come to fully understand the world of responsibility.  The story itself serves as a sort of snap shot, a window to Charlie’s initiation already in progress, and does not go on to finalize Charlie’s understanding, which is what Mordecai Marcus would call an “uncompleted” initiation (Marcus 3).  He knows that he is ready to take responsibility for his life and that of his daughter, Honoria’s, but he does not yet understand the form that responsibility will take, nor that there are other factors involved in whether or not he will be allowed to take Honoria with him away from Paris.  The aspects of his own understanding which Charlie already knows at the beginning of the story, those which he finds out during the course of the story, and those which he has yet to consider all contribute to the whole of a new concept of himself which he has yet to grasp.

At the beginning of “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie has already realized that he cannot live life as he had before his wife’s death and still have his daughter with him.  The beginning of his initiation is part of the background of the story—a fact.  He knows that he should not drink to excess, and so he takes “only one drink every afternoon” (249).  Charlie also knows that he will have to be able to support Honoria, and has waited until now, when he is financially secure, having made an “income last year . . . bigger than it was when [he] had money,” and is going to have his sister from America “keep house” for him (249).

Throughout the story, Charlie discovers that aspects of his past mixed with his current situation will affect his ability to realize his dream of responsibility.  For instance, when he first encounters Duncan and Lorraine, he finds himself reluctant to tell them where he is staying, and instead says, “I’m not settled yet.  I’d better call you” (252).  Despite his words, however, the reader gets the sense that Charlie does not actually plan to call on Duncan and Lorraine at all, that he is reluctant to be reminded of “a crowd who had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago” (252).

Marion’s attitude toward Charlie, as well as Lincoln’s interpretations of her moods, also help Charlie to understand just how difficult getting custody of Honoria really will be.  Marion speaks in a curt and cold manner, and although he thinks in the beginning that “her very aggressiveness gave him an advantage” (250), after Duncan and Lorraine’s appearance in her home, Charlie comes to learn, through Lincoln, that Marion is not going to give up custody of her niece, or her bad opinion of Charlie himself, nearly as easily as he thought she would.

At the end of the story, Charlie still does not wholly understand what it will take to be responsible enough in Marion’s eyes that she will let him take Honoria, but there is hope that he will one day.  He is still a bit naïve, even at the end of the story, in that he believes that “they couldn’t make him pay forever” (262).

Overall, since “Babylon Revisited” starts and ends in the middle of Charlie’s transition from juvenile to adult understanding, leaving it incomplete and ambiguous.  The reader does not know whether or not Charlie will ever understand that he might not ever get to have Honoria live with him.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited." The Art of the Short Story. By Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. 247-62. Print.

Marcus, Mordecai.  “What Is an Initiation Story?” Ed. Shive K. Kumar and Keith Mc Kean.

            Critical Approaches to Fiction.  New Delhi: Atlantic, 2003. 1-3. Print.