For example, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's “Babylon Revisited,” a spiritual sequel to The Great Gatsby, a man named Charlie returns to Paris after he has put his life back together to gain custody of his daughter, who is being raised by his deceased wife's sister. Much of the story plays out in flashbacks and with commentary on the past. It begins with Charlie inquiring after old friends from a bartender, and describes how the places and people once were: “the once-clamorous women's room” (699) and “the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the bull market had come to work in his own custom built car” (699) Most poignantly, however, outside of the hotel and bar, the narrator describes “the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain” (700).
After conversations and observations that address a once-was past, the notion of ghosts stands out. It suggests this story is not just about a man in Paris in the years after the stock market crash, but it isn't a story about actual ghosts either: don't expect a spectral Gatsby to appear and offer advice. It's about memory and ghosts in a more abstract, thematic sense.
It would then be expected the word “ghost” will appear and reappear multiple times in the story, but it doesn't. There is only one more instance of “ghost” in the story: when two old friends, Duncan and Lorraine, encounter Charlie while he's lunching with his daughter, they are described as “ghosts out of the past” (704), but they aren't ethereal phantoms. The question is then, why describe them as ghosts?
Ghosts are intangible manifestations of the dead. They remind us of the, generally unpleasant, past. Prince Hamlet's father doesn't appear to tell Hamlet how great of a king Hamlet will be or how wonderful heaven is: he haunts Elsinore to describe how he was murdered, demand revenge, and bemoan his hellish condition. We can then say ghosts represent unfortunate pasts that cause problems in the present (why else haunt?).
Therefore, when we encounter references to the past in “Babylon Revisited,” whether subtle reminders or flashbacks, we encounter the same themes of regret, sadness, and dealing with the past, specifically, a past of wasteful fun preceding the stock market crash. Charlie is indeed haunted, and not just by the metaphoric ghosts Lorraine and Duncan; almost every page has some kind of mournful reminder of a lost life that left his wife dead and himself in a sanitarium.
When reading for theme, pay careful attention to what similarities emerge in subtle repetitions. Sometimes we don't understand the themes or the repetitions until we've already read a piece through. I didn't notice the “ghost” references and therefore didn't appreciate the deeper thematic meaning they gave the story until the second time I taught it. So, when looking for themes, look for those repetitions and similarities between the repetitions. There are different ways to represent any given theme, and the context of the piece will affect it.
Theme is one of the ways we are able to make personal connections with literature. It takes us from the distant, different events described by a story or a poem and gives us a way to make them personal. It’s more than 80 years since Fitzgerald published “Babylon Revisited” and almost 90 since The Great Gatsby, and yet we still read these and older stories. It’s because the themes gives us a way to understand not just different cultures, but it gives us ways to understand and identify how we see and engage with the world around us.
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Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 699-713. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
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