English 015 - Americans Abroad
Constant Activity
Constant Activity
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Ross Stern
The constant activity that exists in Paris provokes American travelers to pursue lavish, fast paced lifestyles. Babylon Revisited and The Sun Also Rises both depict Paris’s constant activity leading the characters down a path of destruction. In Babylon Revisited, the constant activity and fast pace which Paris caters to ultimately lures Charlie into dissipation; he loses both valuable relationships and material possessions.
Upon revisiting Paris, Charlie contrasts the present day Paris with the Paris of three years ago. During his return Charlie, was surprised to find that “Paris was so empty” (p. 385). He also “heard only a single, bored voice in the once clamorous women’s room” (p. 385). It appears as if the Paris Charlie had know was filled with constant activity and bustling groups of people. This atmosphere had provoked Charlie to lead a fast paced lifestyle filled with “champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at two and ended in a blurred and vague twilight” (p.389). Life seemed to be moving so rapidly that Charlie never examined his current condition, assets, or relationships: “the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and [he] was gone” (p. 386).
The Sun Also Rises also depicts the constant activity that exists in Paris and the lavish, fast paced lifestyles that this activity provokes. The reader constantly witnesses the characters drinking and traveling from bar to bar. Brett illustrates the constant activity in Paris when she claims that, “One’s an ass to leave Paris” (p. 81). She makes this statement when describing her travels in Budapest, a place where “nothing” happens. The characters in The Sun Also Rises aimlessly travel from one activity to the next wasting their lives away. Needless to say, in the end they suffer the consequences.
Posted by on October 23, 2003 at 02:18 PM