The Great Gatsby Quote Analysis

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Thesis: F. Scott Fitzgerald proves through Charlie Wales in Babylon Revisited that as Charlie caves in to many temptations for the sake of redemption of his past, changing for the future is impossible. Body Paragraph #1: The encounter with Lorraine and Duncan is a stiff character test in which Charlie is forced to relive his past in order to decide what he wants for his future. The aspects of Charlie’s past that used to be appealing to him are being offered by Lorraine and Duncan as temptations to revisit the nature of his past of heavy drinking and lavishness. Charlie’s attempt to forget Lorraine and Duncan’s significance is not out of ridicule, rather trying to pave the path for his future without excess indulgence. When Lorraine Quarrles and Duncan Schaeffer first find Charlie and his daughter, Honoria…show more content…
Charlie sees life as an economic structure: people, places, and things in continuous change. When Charlie realizes in the end of his journey that all along he had been seeing his situation as a circular flow of money coming and going “he thought rather angrily that this was just money-he had given so many people money. . .” (Fitzgerald 21). He realizes that everything he knows involves money. All he made, all he lost, all he can collect to get Honoria back with. What Charlie does not understand is that his life depends on change, not the money he deals with. In hopes of gaining his daughter back, Charlie makes a financial adjustment. The economic source of “Charlie’s misconception of human character and human nature shows up in much of his language in much of the story and thus, of course, in much of his thinking” (Tebbetts 152). He simply misunderstands that money is not the triumphant factor in his ability to change. Charlie’s idea of getting and spending as the way to live will force him to continue his bad
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