Babylon Revisited F. Scott Fitzgerald | John V. Hagopian (essay date 1962)
John V. Hagopian (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: "A Prince in Babylon," in Fitzgerald Newsletter, No. 19, Fall, 1962, pp. 1-3.
[In the following essay, Hagopian examines what he describes as religious, Dantesque elements in the story.]
Despite the obvious symbolism of the title, critics have not generally observed that F's [Fitzgerald's] "Babylon Revisited" is a religious story—more exactly a Catholic, Dantesque story. Not only does it evoke the mood of paralysis and defeat of the Waste Land generation following the stock market crash of 1929, but it renders with understanding and compassion the purgatorial suffering of a man for whom repentance and social readjustment alone are not enough to redeem his past. Nevertheless, as the symbolism and dramatic action both suggest, eventual redemption is probable.
F [Fitzgerald] was born into a Catholic family and had a Catholic upbringing; and his most important short story, like his most...
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