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Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers >
Graduate School of Humanities and Human Sciences / Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences >
Journal of the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences >
volume 10 >
Morality and the Failure of Redemption : F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
| Title: | Morality and the Failure of Redemption : F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” |
| Authors: | Matsuura, Kazuhiro Browse this author |
| Issue Date: | Mar-2015 |
| Publisher: | 北海道大学文学研究科 |
| Journal Title: | Journal of the Graduate School of Letters |
| Volume: | 10 |
| Start Page: | 87 |
| End Page: | 94 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines thematic similarities between the mythical story of the Wandering Jew and the works of F.Scott Fitzgerald; more specifically his short stories“Babylon Revisited” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Permeating all three tales are themes of wandering, inability to escape the repercussions of the past, and debt, particularly to the dead, that can never be repaid. I argue that the protagonists of“Babylon Revisited”and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”have serious and unredeemable moral debts they acquired spontaneously. I argue that in both stories, Fitzgerald deliberately draws on the myth to explore issues of moral redemption,guilt,suffering,and the impossibility to revisit the past to retrieve and heal previous transgressions;and that these themes are exemplified in the stories circular narrative structures. |
| Type: | bulletin (article) |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2115/58210 |
| Appears in Collections: | Journal of the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences > volume 10
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