English 015 - Americans Abroad
Spending Power
Spending Power
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Zac Milner
At first glance, the members of the “in-crowds” in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and in Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” appear to have formed meaningful relationships. Within their respective groups, Jake Barnes and Charlie Wales parade around Europe, going from exclusive bar to exclusive bar, laughing and chatting the whole way through. But the most telling aspect of these two main characters appears when they are alone, with only their thoughts. It comes to light that their friends are both as expendable and as permanent as money. These friends have been acquired through money, but unlike store bought goods, they cannot simply be returned. For Jake and Charlie, money can be squandered, but its purchases are eternal and ever-present— corrupting even the most pure and sentimental things, and taking over their lives.
In “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie Wales, having made enough money in America, “gave up business and came over [to Europe] with nothing to do” (p. 394). This lack of any real direction causes Charlie to join up with a group of like-persons—directionless Americans who find themselves planted on European soil. Their experiences center around moving between bars and spending vast amounts of money: “an increase of paying” for the sake of “slower and slower motion” (p. 389). Charlie feels that as a suddenly rich man in Paris, this is the time of his life. He wants every moment to last as long as possible, and attempts to slow down time by “buying” memories—enhancing the importance of a moment in his mind by overpaying for it.
In the process of buying memories, Charlie buys friends. His friendships with Lorraine and crew are rooted in superficiality, and represent part of an unessential past in Charlie’s mind. In retrospect, Charlie sees the craziness of the group’s actions, like the night he had “stolen a tricycle and pedaled Lorraine all over the Étoile between the small hours and dawn” (p. 398). The culture in Paris was so based around money that Charlie could buy everything and feel as if he owned the city. He could perform such reckless, immature, and immoral acts as stealing a tricycle or locking his wife out in the snow because he had no fear of consequences. As long as he kept spending money, Charlie could do no wrong.
Yet, even though Charlie sees himself as a completely different man now, memories such as the tricycle incident—described as “one of many”—seem to fit, while memories of his dead wife “didn’t fit in with any other act of his life” (p. 398). The reason for this is simple: the memories with Charlie’s in-crowd were bought; although they are only memories now, Charlie spent so much money on acquiring them that they are, and will forever be, a part of his life. Recollections of his wife, on the other hand, exist only intangibly in Charlie’s mind.
Memories of that trip to Paris stick with other members of his in-crowd just as much as they stick with Charlie. When Charlie tries to escape the “ghosts of the past,” (p. 391) he is unsuccessful. In buying his memories, in treating his time in Paris as if it were the best time in life, Charlie’s friends feel that they are the most important people in his life too. As Lorraine writes to him upon his return to Paris, “you were so strange when we saw you the other day that I wondered if I did something to offend you… We did have such good times that crazy spring…” (p. 398). Lorraine and Duncan cannot understand why Charlie tries to spurn them. Even if he is sober now, and “stronger than they were,” (p. 391) they still feel like the time spent together in Europe was the essence of all their lives. Charlie has brought Lorraine and Duncan into his life through money, and he cannot get rid of them, along with the subsequent memories, because he has invested so much money in them.
Charlie has spent the last several years trying to overcome his Parisian past. The key to completing this escape is his daughter, Honoria. Honoria represents something completely pure and uncorrupted by money. Even to other characters, she is a source of comfort: patrons in a restaurant “bent all their silences upon her, staring as if she were something no more conscious than a flower” (p. 390). To Charlie, Honoria is unscathed by the forces of money, and his dream is to “implant a little of himself into her before she crystallized utterly” (p. 391). Ultimately the ghosts of Charlie’s former crowd ruin this dream as well, as they intrude on him just as he has secured his daughter. Fittingly, Charlie realizes “there wasn’t much he could do now except send Honoria some things… he thought rather angrily that this was just money—he had given so many people money” (p. 402). Honoria ends up like all of Charlie’s other relationships, undeniably tied to money.
This is contrasted with Marion and Lincoln Peters, who did not have money to squander, and now have a stable family situation. Charlie says of their household, “It was warm here, it was a home…they were very much in the grip of life and circumstances” (p. 399). The Peters were often jealous of Charlie’s undeserving financial success, for “while [he was] tearing around Europe throwing money away,” the Peters “were just getting along” (397). In the end, however, although they might not have as much money as Charlie, the Peters have a strong family. Charlie sees that his own “grip of life and circumstances” was lost with every dollar spent in Paris.
In The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes has not had years to reflect on his wandering abroad, for he is in the height of it when the story picks up. Like Charlie, he parties his nights away with the “in-crowd,” spending more and more money to slow down time. Also like Charlie, Jake’s group of friends is tied together by money. Although some of the characters in his crew are running low on funds, they still find ways to spend it, usually at the nicest bars in Europe. But unlike Charlie, Jake is not disillusioned by the moment: whereas Charlie realizes many years after his excursions “the meaning of the word ‘dissipate,’” (389) Jake is cognizant of his dissipation as it is happening. Although he is enjoying the moment, Jake realizes that he will spend his days bouncing around Europe, always having a group of friends, but never a significant existence.
Jake’s dissipation is linked with his philosophy on money, shown clearly on page 152. Jake says “I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time... Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth… the world was a good place to buy in.” Jake’s concept of money focuses around the idea that in absence of true meaning and direction, a person can buy a way of life. Jake knows that his life is going nowhere so he spends money in an attempt to simply have a good time—albeit a meaningless one.
Money has brought Jake’s group together, and it serves the double purpose of keeping them from falling apart. Spending time and money with his in-crowd helps Jake, and others, from sinking into depression. In a conversation about the bulls’ rituals before the bull fight, the group dynamics of this Lost Generation crew is explained perfectly. Jake says of the bulls “They’re only dangerous when they’re alone” and later Bill says “don’t you ever detach me from the herd” (p. 145). When these people are not traveling as a pack, their thoughts turn to things that which cannot be bought.
The reader sees this “dangerous” lonely state mostly with Jake, and it is always at night. Jake says “it is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing” (p. 42). Alone at night, there is nothing to buy: money is completely valueless; without money as a distraction, Jake’s thoughts always turn to Brett, and consequently to his incompetence. Charlie also has his saddest thoughts at night, for in this lonely, dark state, he imagines his wife (p. 397). When morning comes, each character feels relief: after Jake’s agonizing night he says “it was a fine morning,” (p. 43); Charlie, too, wakes up “feeling happy” (p. 397). A new day brings with it the promise of material distractions.
Jake’s group of friends stem from his idea of money—that one can buy into the world—and keep Jake from non-financial thoughts. Apart from his relationship with Brett, Jake’s connection to other members of the in-crowd is superficial. Jake chooses to keep his lonely thoughts and fits of depression from the other members of the group. On a fishing trip involving only Jake and Bill, the latter asks a series of questions about Jake’s being an expatriate, to which Jake replies “take some more coffee” (p. 120). Jake does not consider these people close enough friends to discuss such personal issues, but because he is constantly with them, the group becomes intertwined with every aspect of his life.
Jake’s personal indulgence, his escape from money and the group, is bullfighting. To Jake, bullfighting is completely uncorrupted—it is his Honoria. Jake has something money cannot buy: “aficion.” In Jake’s words, Montoya “forgave me all my friends… they were simply a little something shameful between us,” (p. 137) because Jake is a proven aficionado. Thus, Jake is not embarrassed to bring his group into this one pure realm of life.
Eventually, even bullfighting is corrupted. Brett has an affair with the young bull fighter Pedro Romero, resulting in his getting beaten up, but more importantly, in the breaking of Montoya’s code that states “any foreigner can flatten” a bullfighter; that foreign ladies are often the end of a young bullfighter, who, as Montoya adds, “should stay with his own people” (p. 176). Montoya confides this piece of information in Jake, yet it is Jake’s own friend who disobeys Montoya, ruining at least part of Jake’s aficion, and corrupting the innocent Romero. Jake, like Charlie, is haunted in every action by his group of friends.
The film director Gottfried Reinhardt once said “money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life.” Jake and Charlie have bought a lifestyle, but are cognizant of the fact that they have sold their lives in the process. Money has become an essential characteristic, not simply an accessory. A world in which these two characters can have the invaluable things that they so dearly desire, is not, as Jake says at the end of his story, “pretty to think [of]” (p. 251). Rather, it is agonizing to think of the impossible—life untouched by the forces of money. Indeed, Jake and Charlie pay not to have these thoughts.
Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 02:18 PM
Comments
This is a happy production: the result of much thought & strategizing on your part, some engaged peer editing, and a dexterous response to suggestions. You emerge with a powerful reading of these two texts, one that highlights a common symptom while preserving a strong sense of the difference of each case. The paper is a pleasure to read; I feel like I’ve really learned something about commodification in these texts, thanks to your careful argumentation.
The intro wobbles just a bit – the distinction between money in general & purchases seems a little blurry, when you set up ‘friends’. But this blurriness doesn’t get in your way in the body of the paper, when you’re tying bonds made in the in-crowds to spending patterns. I was intrigued to see you link spending to slowing down time – you demonstrate this well in BR (setting us up to especially appreciate the irony of Charlie’s ‘sober’ panic about time still passing him by), but you could use a little proof from SAR to show this function of money operating across the texts. Overall, though, you do a marvelous job in keeping your readings of each text engaged with each other.
One possible thickening of your thesis: you celebrate Marion as the healthy alternative to spending/squandering. But I wonder whether her poverty – and the hypochondriacal lack of generosity that penury might have fostered – is yet another money-caused blockage of connection.
The paper brims with great use of quotes as proof for unflaggingly insightful claims. Though passive constructions get in the way a couple of times, your argumentation here is clear, well-paced, even elegant. It’s a measure of this essay’s power that the phrases “time spent together in Europe” turns into a, well, charged phrase.