Charlie Wales In Babylon Revisited And The Dead

The Greek philosopher and scientist, Aristotle says, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”. This proverb applies to both the characters of Charlie Wales in “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gabriel Conroy in “The Dead” by James Joyce. Although, the plots of each story hold a very partial amount of likeliness, the main characters of both stories share qualities that can be compared and contrasted. Charlie initiates as someone who has worked on himself and is aware of who he is and the man he wants to be, while Gabriel consistently buries his emotions beneath a layer of decorum and is not very confident in himself. Moreover, Charlie is presented as a man who has lost everything, including his wife and his child due to

Unlike Conroy, Wales does not cower from the past, instead he concedes to his mistakes and attempts to remedy them by repairing what’s left of his family. Nonetheless, Charlie’s quest to gain back Honoria, is also his quest to prove to himself, Marion (Honoria’s aunt and Helen’s sister), and others who do not know him that he is no longer the same man he used to be. Thus, the reader still questions whether or not Charlie had actually reformed from his “catering to vice and waste” (Fitzgerald 313) that caused him “to arrive at [a] condition of utter irresponsibility” (Fitzgerald 321). On one hand, Charlie persistently refuses to celebrate with Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles, his former drinking cronies. While on the other hand, the first thing Charlie does subsequent to the unanticipated encounter with Lorraine and Duncan at Marion’s house, is “go directly to the Ritz bar with the furious idea of finding Lorrain and Duncan” (Fitzgerald 323). Moreover, the beginning of the story and the end of the story terminate in the same place, the Ritz Bar, which implies that Charlie may not have fully reformed, and that he may end up where he began. This circular structure could be viewed as a device employed by Fitzgerald to contradict the obstinate attempts by Wales to reform