In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story Babylon Revisited the main character, Mr. Charlie Wales reflects on his life with the bartender at the Ritz Hotel, “’I heard that you lost a lot in the crash.’ ‘I did,’ and he added grimly, ‘but I lost everything I wanted in the boom’” (ch. 5). This is the best description of how Mr. Wales brought about his fate about by his own self destructive tendencies and the economic changes of the 1920s and 1930s. These things affected his life and his attempt to get his daughter back from his in-laws. Mr. Wales’ self-destructive tendencies, especially the use of alcohol, led him to lose his immediate family and the trust from his in-laws. The rise and fall of the economy during the roaring twenties and the Great Depression set the back drop in this short story which provides Mr. Wales with unforeseen events that aid in his self-destruction but, also gives rise to other conflicts in the story. This storm of past actions followed by unpredictable events creates this short story’s sense of “what if” that leads us, the readers, to wonder what did Mr. Wales need to do, if anything, to achieve his intended goal of earning back the trust of his in-laws so they would let him be a father again. Though his goal would be disrupted through only fault of his own.

The short story begins with Mr. Wales in a Parisian bar that he would often visit in his earlier years. This is where he gives the address of his in-laws, Marion and Lincoln Peters, whom he was staying with, to the bartender intended for some of his old friends, Loraine and Duncan Schaeffer (Fitzgerald ch. 1). In this scene, his self-destructive tendencies begin to appear. Mr. Wales, who is a recovering alcoholic, due to his past of living in leisure, is now in an old, favorite bar looking for some of his old friends, who too lived as he once did, while his main purpose for coming to Paris is to prove to Marion and Lincoln that he is a changed man capable of caring for his young daughter on his own. Young and Timko discuss this in their paper “Benefits and Costs of Alcoholic Relationships and Recovery Through Al-Anon” where they say that the relationship of an alcoholic with a concerned other, or in this case Mr. Wales friends, Loraine, and Duncan, who are drawing him back to his old ways through a use of social acceptance (3). However, contrary to Young and Timko’s work, Loraine and Duncan are pressuring Mr. Wales toward the life he tried to leave behind and not the way of life that is better suited for both his physical health and his healthy family relationships. The most significant example of how this habit has affected his life is when Mr. Wales is at the house of his in-laws, Marion and Lincoln Peters, the sister of Mr. Wales late wife and her husband, who have been taking care of Mr. Wales’s daughter, Honoria, since the death of her mother three years ago. As they are sitting and catching up over the events of the last few months Mr. Wales makes a mistake that shows his self-destructive tendencies once more and the subconscious action that show it:

“In the bar this afternoon"--he stumbled, seeing his mistake--"there wasn't a man I knew."

She looked at him keenly. "I should think you'd have had enough of bars."

"I only stayed a minute. I take one drink every afternoon, and no more." (Fitzgerald ch. 1)

Mr. Wales carelessness about telling Marion and Lincoln that he is still going to bars regularly shows his disregard for what she thinks is best for him and his family, on a subconscious level, however, the entire point of his visit to Paris was to show them how he has changed, so that he can begin to take care of his daughter and this statement has done very little to show that he has changed. After this initial conversation, his actions within the story are very reasonable, even when it comes to his friends from the old days, Lorine and Duncan, who as it seems have not changed their ways from the extravagance of years before. In their conversations, it is apparent that Mr. Wales wants to catch up with them and reminisce about the old days of fun they all used to have, but they are only a distraction from his current goal of getting his daughter back from his in-laws. This idea that Mr. Wales wants to maintain a relationship with these people, but on his own terms is demonstrated by Young and Timko when they say “The decision to seek help may simply represent a rejection of two options deemed unacceptable: destroying the relationship or reverting to the status quo” (5). This is what Mr. Wales wants to do, and is struggling to consolidate with, though he has already helped himself from his alcoholism understanding the psychology of someone in this state clarifies the actual wants and needs of people in this situation, from others, around them. The final interaction between Mr. Wales, Marion and Lincoln is the last time his self-destructive nature is seen in “Babylon Revisited” as the three of them discuss the arrangements that would have to be made to accommodate Honoria moving to Prague with Mr. Wales, Mr. Wales’s friends show up unannounced and cause Marion to become upset to the point she gets physically ill and all discussion about Honoria stops. Mr. Wales insists that “I didn't tell them to come here. They wormed your name out of somebody. They deliberately-" (Fitzgerald ch. 4) completely forgetting about leaving the address for them at the Ritz hotel bar at the beginning of the story. Thus, completing his ultimate destructive plan and ruining his chances of taking Honoria back with him.

This obvious need to destroy himself though did include his subconscious leading him to make poor choices to punish himself, the main culprit of his self-destruction was his alcoholism. In the opening dialogue with the bar tender at the Ritz Hotel, Mr. Wales talks about ending his habit of heavy drinking:

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

Alix congratulated him: "You were going pretty strong a couple of years ago." (Fitzgerald ch. 1)

This idea is continued during some of his interactions with Loraine and Duncan who continually ask him to go out with them and eluded to the old days when Mr. Wales drinking was out of control by reminding him "But I remember once when you hammered on my door at four A.M. I was enough of a good sport to give you a drink." (Fitzgerald ch. 4) This heavy drinking of Mr. Wales is a repeated event that is mentioned during this story it is also the main cause of Marion and Lincoln’s distrust of Mr. Wales actions when in the middle of his heaviest drinking time he locked his late wife Helen out of their home and Marion has never gotten over that. 

“When he arrived home alone he turned the key in the lock in wild anger. How could he know she would arrive an hour later alone, that there would be a snowstorm in which she wandered about in slippers, too confused to find a taxi?” (Fitzgerald ch. 3)

This single event is the lens that Marion views Mr. Wales through, though he may have changed his ways it will take more to change her mind as Young and Timko discuss “Maintaining a relationship with an alcoholic entails significant impacts on physical and mental health” (5) This is the issue that Marion has with Mr. Wales and what she believes will be his future actions with his daughter. These actions that drive the story forward through the fault of Mr. Wales do have a reason not just poor decisions on his part.

The cause for Mr. Wales self-destructive tendencies may be due to his success in the stock market. This story’s events are directly related to the actions many of the characters take during the stock market boom of the 1920s and as Nissle and Bschor say in their analysis of people who have won the lottery followed by an episode of depression:

“Case analyses suggest that in both patients, winning was a life event relevant to the development of the depressive episode. Desirable life events might influence the course of a psychiatric illness just as negative events do.” (1)

This reasoning is first revealed at the beginning as Mr. Wales talks to the bar tender at the Ritz hotel about all the people that use to live as Mr. Wales did but have since gone broke because of the 1930s crash and have left Paris because of it but in the entirety of the conversation it seems that Mr. Wales has been the only one that has become successful in the aftermath. Then on his way to his in-law’s house he recounts the days when he ate at fancy restaurants and went to parties while not having to work. Mr. Wales new wealth is again seen while talking to his daughter at lunch about going to a toy store later in the afternoon and she resists, "’Well, you brought me this doll.’ She had it with her. ‘And I've got lots of things. And we're not rich any more, are we?’" (Fitzgerald ch. 2) Mr. Wales daughter showing him her own concern for money only further increases his guilt associated with how easy he was able to move on from the Great Depression. Especially since Honoria has spent so much time with Marion and Lincoln and now has their frugal attitude which is not considered a bad thing in American culture but it only furthers the distance felt by Mr. Wales with his daughter. 

Another major concept is the idea of money and how it affects the lives of people who have it and those who lose it. Mr. Wales’s regret over his gain and loss of his fortune is different from the concept of money due to the fact that this idea follows how different characters’ lives changed through the course of 1920’s rise of the stock market and the 1930’s fall of the stock market and how that has affected their actions. As it has been explored already in this story the interaction at the beginning of the story between Mr. Wales and the Bar tender at the Ritz Hotel as they discuss different people once known to Mr. Wales who have now been abandoned by their money and have moved away from their lives of leisure in Paris. To understand some pivotal moments in the story one must first understand the history of the events and setting in question. In the 1920s there were many new inventions that led to new companies and fortunes being made, along with the recent industrial revolution many people had well-paying jobs and new products to buy. This led to the boom of the stock market with new businesses constantly opening and others growing many decided to invest what they had, in these new companies. Then in the late 1920s and the 1930s the businesses began to suffer as people were no longer purchasing the products sold by these businesses like they were during the early 1920s when most people were experiencing financial growth. This led to companies being worth less and the value of the stock in the companies began to drop and because the banks were still on the gold standard many of them did not have physical money on hand so when the market started to fall people could not get their money they had invested before their shares were worthless. This lack of government oversight when it came to the depreciation of the dollar is the topic of “Root causes; The Great Depression” which says that the demands of foreign powers that were financially stable.

“The real failures came later. In 1931 Austria's government had to let its biggest bank collapse because it couldn't meet foreign powers' conditions for a loan. Gold fled Austria, then Germany, then Britain, and finally America. Governments responded with monetary and fiscal austerity. The resulting hardship provoked political revolt. Royal Navy sailors protested over proposed pay cuts and Germans elected communists and Nazis.” (par. 6) 

The United States of America was affected just as these other countries that the actions of led to the break out of the second world war. The crash that is then caused creates a whole new set of problems toward recovery. One such issue is unemployment. Unemployment creates portions of the population that cannot feed or shelter themselves which in turn forces the governments hand to act to protect these people from exposure and starvation and during the Great Depression the unemployment rate peaked at fourteen percent. (Phelps ch.5) So with this understanding of the history behind the story one can begin to analyze how the financial situation of different characters. First, the protagonist Mr. Wales, who first succeeds in the stock market leading him to live a life of care free luxury in Paris with his wife as he becomes an alcoholic and slow begins to hurt those closes to him as mention during the discussion of self-destruction but afterward Mr. Wales was able to become successful again by going into business in Czechoslovakia where the American financial crisis was not as influential. He reached his financial peak while in France and he said “We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us.” (Fitzgerald ch. 1) Marion and Lincoln Peters were also affected by the boom and crash. As Lincoln says to Mr. Wales:

"While you and Helen were tearing around Europe throwing money away, we were just getting along. I didn't touch any of the prosperity because I never got ahead enough to carry anything but my insurance. I think Marion felt there was some kind of injustice in it--you not even working toward the end, and getting richer and richer." (Fitzgerald ch. 4)

This quote shows that during the rise and boom the Peters family was only able to keep working to pay their bills and did not have enough left over to invest which did not let them get ahead financially but also prevented them from losing anything at the time of the crash. Finally, Mr. Wales’s friends Loraine and Duncan who seem to come from old money, or at least money that was not made during the boom of the stock market in the 1920s therefore they also did not gain or lose a significant amount money during the events of these two decades but are still on the opposite end of the spectrum from Marion and Lincoln both families pulling Mr. Wales toward their end of the spectrum.

Babylon Revisited seems to be a fairly straight forward story about a man trying to get his daughter back after the events of the Roaring Twenties and The Great Depression but in actuality it holds some deep issues about self-destruction, alcoholism, and the effects of money on both relationships and social standing. These topics are ones that continue to carry weight to this day, many people around the world suffer from alcoholism and the economic events that triggered the crash in the 1930s are still maintain a possibility of happening again. Being able to understand these concepts is the first step to avoiding them in the future, so people like Mr. Wales will not have to struggle with these problems. The dependents on use of alcohol is something that plagues thousands of people that need the help of all who they encounter as well as the society that led them to this dependency. As a strong nation it is all of our duties to help protect the future generations from this disease by providing better ways of dealing with issues and surviving better than Mr. Wales does.  Mr. Wales seems to be an average guy that has been put through very extraordinary circumstances that have led him to be in a social state where he is very unhappy because he has lost his friends from years ago, to time and he has lost his family to death and distrust through his own actions leaving him alone though financially stable. This idea can be seen very clearly by the quote at the beginning, Mr. Wales did in fact lose a great deal of money when the stock market crashed but the money he lost was nothing compared to the relationships he lost through his actions during the economic boom during the 1920s. In all Mr. Charlie Wales is a very interesting man especially when viewed through the concepts of self-destruction and money and how both of these things have influenced his actions and feelings and those of the people around him.
