English 015 - Americans Abroad
Destiny
Destiny
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Simon Parsons
Both Jake, in The Sun Also Rises, and Charlie, in Babylon Revisited, tend to live in hindsight of a traumatic period that directly affects their present, distressed state. They feel constant disillusionment of wanting what they cannot have as a result of the past, while, at the same time, struggling to change their destiny. In response to the unwanted truth, both characters seek to suppress disillusion and prolong fate through the repetition of false comforts: drinking, lavishly giving away money, roaming around bars, and other activities made available because “life was so simple in France” (Hemingway, 236). These routines intend to relieve the pains at the epicenter of their tragedies by giving illusions of stability. The result, however, is counter-productive, as repetition of false impressions over time actually produces a depressed character connected to the truth. Ultimately, the past proves overwhelmingly in favor of a destiny of feeling unfulfilled, to which Jake and Charlie willingly acquiesce.
It is important to first underline one important difference that exists between the two characters: where they stand in the timeline of their situations. The disillusion and failure for Charlie happens before the story begins and thus, in revisiting his past, he emphasizes that even with a separation of time, it is still possible to reawaken suppressed feelings and uncover regret: “[He] felt the stillness from the moment he got out of the taxi and saw the doorman” (385). At the conclusion of Babylon Revisited, Charlie shows that he understands and accepts his fate. In the Sun Also Rises, on the other hand, Jake deals with disillusionment internally in the present, unable to revisit it visually. An example of this is when he recalls a mental image of himself in the Italian hospital when someone had told him, “You…have given more than your life.” Thinking back he ponders, “I never used to realize it, I guess. I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people,” (39). Nevertheless, Jake makes an effort to try and keep a present steady mind through false comforts. By the end of the book, like Charlie, he also fully comprehends his destiny of disillusionment.
Babylon Revisited begins with Charlie returning to Paris a couple years after his previous carousal of the city amidst the “Lost Generation” of post WWI. However, right away when he comes upon a bar, he is struck by an old routine of his, “when he turned into the bar he traveled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit” (385). This event shows Charlie’s retrospective manner and ignites his reminiscence of the past. Thereafter, he is inundated by memories of a time of frivolous spending, repetitious drinking, partying, and illusions of grandeur: “He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred franc notes tosses to a doorman for calling a cab” (389). The prevailing feeling shown by Charlie during this past time was that he could have anything he wanted. However, Charlie’s false comforts begin to guide him to the reality of his character (unbeknownst to him), setting the stage for a swift and destructive tragedy.
At the beginning of Babylon Revisited though, all the repercussions of his past are not evident. Charlie’s primary initiative to return to “Babylon” is to try and win back his daughter who was placed in the custody of his sister-in-law, Marion, while he recovered from his “collapse.” Walking through the same scenes of the Rue Bonaparte that he did two years ago, “he felt exultant;” (396) although, after reminiscing old times and leaving to enter his room, he is haunted by the past, his wife, and his illusions of comfort. He remembers “Helen, whom he had loved so until they had senselessly begun to abuse each other’s love…tear it into shreads” (396). He then reflects on the night she wandered home alone in slippers through a snowstorm because Charlie was in “wild anger,” Helen “escaping pneumonia by a miracle, and all the attendant horror” (396).
Charlie truly feels that he is a changed man upon his return, as he has been sober for a year and a half, and it appears that he has gained sufficient confidence to win back Honoria, his daughter. However, the candle of hope is abruptly extinguished when a gust of the past enters through the door: Charlie’s friends, Lorraine and Duncan. This pair represents the past tragedy of Charlie and, as a result of their unexpected entrance, Marion’s uncertain views quickly become firm certainties: “That kind of people make her really physically sick. It’s too bad. It doesn’t help matters,” (400) Lincoln told him.
Charlie’s early realization of the word “dissipate,” which describes the counter-productive effect of his false comforts, stands strong through the story. Looking back on the fabricated impressions which he imposed on himself, he knows that “it hadn’t been given for nothing. It had been given…as an offering to destiny that he might not remember…the things that now he would always remember—his child taken from him his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont” (389). Charlie, two years later, completely realizes the process of his dissipation through false comforts and the resulting fate of his sterility. Upon learning that he cannot have what he wants, “he went back to his table. His whiskey glass was empty, but he shook his head when Alix looked at it questioningly. There wasn’t much he could now…” (402). Charlie accepts his unfulfilled fate for which the false comfort of alcohol no longer has power to conceal.
In The Sun Also Rises, Jake lives in hindsight of his experience in WWI, which had a traumatic effect on his present character. Interestingly, this book also requires one to read from back to front after a first read, in order to pick up all of the successive details. At the beginning Jake tries to cover up his past by insinuating the facts and not speaking about it directly. He skirts the fact when he says, “It was a rotten way to be wounded” (38). Through repetition of this manner over time, it is discovered that Jake received a life-altering wound in the war which possibly left him impotent, and, like Charlie, he toils in the present with the disillusionment of wanting what he cannot have as a result of his previous trauma: Brett. However, being in a different point in time than Charlie makes Jake experience the disillusion and failure actually during the story. It is therefore easier to see the false comforts contradicting Jake’s stability from moment to moment, instead of with the gap of time and understood changes in Babylon Revisited.
Jake’s character is combating the truth that his past wound may carry the fate of being unable to love. As Brett tells Jake early on in the book, “Don’t we pay for all the things we do, though?” (34). Jake responds by laughing it away by saying about his tragedy that he had looked at it from all angles, “including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them” (35). This front of high spirits is kept strong by similar false comforts to what Charlie experiences. Jake is a member of the expatriate literary circle called the “Lost Generation,” which means, according to Bill, “you’ve lost touch with the soil...Fake European standards have ruined you…You drink yourself to death…You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working...You hang around cafes” (120).
One moment where Jake shows his erroneous comforts giving way to a realization of his empty character is when Jake turns to contemplation at his hotel, similar to when Charlie leaves the Rue Bonaparte for his room. There he says, “My head started to work. The old grievance” (39). He continues to speculate that, “Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn’t run into Brett when they shipped me to England” (39). Jake is disillusioned because he understands a key contradiction. The typical American existence in Paris clutches the idea that “if you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money,” (237) whereas Jake’s situation opposes it because he is unable to win over Brett by any means due to his tragedy. Thereafter, it seems that he begins to grasp his fate and, later in the book, he shows his disillusioned state when he goes on the fishing trip with Bill. There, Bill asks Jake, “Were you ever in love with her?” and Jake replies, “Off and on for a hell of a long time.” Later he says, “It’s all right, I don’t give a damn any more” (128).
At the conclusion of the novel, Jake shows that he’s giving in to the inevitable. He continues to live in hindsight; however, now he also has a clear knowledge of what his future holds for him. Brett asks the expatriate, “Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.” Complying with fate, he replies in the final line of the novel, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (251). Similar to Charlie, he understands the disillusionment that his future entails.
The close of both novels is quite pessimistic. Both characters try to make one last futile stab before they give up. Charlie “thought rather angrily that this was just money—he had given so many people money…” (402) Jake, with his last line, attempts futily to put some of the blame on Brett. The future for these two protagonists seems bleak.
Posted by on October 31, 2003 at 06:01 PM