Babylon Revisited Drugs and Alcohol Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Paragraph)

Quote #1

"If you see Mr. Schaeffer, give him this," he said. "It's my brother-in-law's address. I haven't settled on a hotel yet." (1.8)

Charlie's decision to leave Tom's address for Duncan at the Ritz bar ultimately leads to his downfall at the end of the story. It seems like Charlie's destruction is his own fault and is actually there from the very beginning of the story, suggesting that he is, in a way, doomed from the beginning.

Quote #2

"No, no more," Charlie said, "I'm going slow these days."

Alix congratulated him: "You were going pretty strong a couple of years ago." (1.11-12)

And so was Fitzgerald. Zelda wrote to him of his debauchery: "You were literally eternally drunk" (Source: Sally Cline. Zelda Fitzgerald. Arcade Publishing, 2004). The biographical connections with Fitzgerald's own life jump out at the reader from the start of "Babylon Revisited."

Quote #3

"I haven't been to America for months. I'm in business in Prague, representing a couple of concerns there. They don't know about me down there." (1.15)

Notice how Fitzgerald hints at Charlie's debauched past. It takes almost the entire story for us to get the full background on our protagonist. But we get the idea of Charlie's history – the mood of his back story – in the very beginning.