F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited'

Literary Research Report: “The Big Party’s Over Now” “You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly […] when you begin to write” (Fitzgerald). In a letter to a family friend, Fitzgerald offered advice on writing. You have to write what you know and more importantly, how you feel. F. Scott Fitzgerald certainly wrote both what he knew and how he felt in his story, “Babylon Revisited”. The parallels between Fitzgerald’s own life and “Babylon Revisited” (along with his other stories) are apparent. Perhaps he was able to write such masterpieces by utilizing the pain and joy he felt in his own eccentric and somewhat depressing life. “Dear Pie” starts out a letter from Fitzgerald to his eleven year old daughter, Frances. He continues, saying “I am glad you are happy but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. […] All I believe

Fitzgerald was part of a literary group known as “The Lost Generation” in the 1920s, which included brilliant authors including Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway (O’Connor). This group shared a sense of moral loss due to World War I. World War I destroyed the idea that if one possesses good virtues, good things will happen to them (soldiers dying etc). They basically rejected current American values. “The Lost Generation” often met in France and other parts of Europe, with Fitzgerald moving to France in 1924 with his wife and daughter. The family alternated between the Riviera and Paris. The story is set in Paris, and Charlie, returning after its glamour days in the 1920’s now sees what the Great Depression has done to it. “Paris was so empty” (Fitzgerald 1). In real life, Fitzgerald probably felt this way about his old home and was reflecting on it through this story, which was written right after the Great Depression