In life, one must realize that it is impossible to be perfect, and therefore there will always be things that one will regret. The modernist author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his short story "Babylon Revisited", tells the story of a man who has made many mistakes in his life and lives with these regrets and desperately tries to put his life back together. Specifically, this is the story of the main character, Charlie. He, a thirty-five year old American, who used to live in Paris, now returns to Paris to regain custody of his daughter after recovering from the death of his wife and his battle with alcoholism. However, while he pays for his mistake in the past, he must face the obstacles that prevent him from achieving his goal, which are the suffering from the death of his wife and the fight against alcoholism, the prejudices of the Marions, the harassment by his old drunk friends. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The first barrier effect to Charlie's goal achievement is that Charlie suffers from the death of his wife and battles alcoholism again. It falls apart for several years as in his thought "I ruined this city for myself. I didn't realize it, but the days followed one after another, and then two years went away, and everything went away, and I I was gone." Therefore, he loses custody of his daughter, Honoria, to Marion. To get Honoria back, he must prove that he is different now. He then tries to limit himself to just one drink a day in the afternoon, fighting the urge to drink because of his daughter. For example, when Lincoln invited him to have a cocktail, he said, "I only have one drink every afternoon, and that was enough for me." However, it hasn't been an easy fight as he has a serious drinking problem. The first thing Charlie does when he returns to Paris is go to the familiar bar, The Ritz. The Ritz bar appears at the beginning and at the end of the story it is a proof of how the bar has a close relative of Charlie and how serious Charlie's alcoholism problem is. Even if Charlie loses his daughter again in the end, Charlie will be able to overcome this obstacle in the future. One can predict when Charlie will refuse to refill the drink at the end of the story and will continue to hope that one day he can win his daughter back because one day he will return; they couldn't make him pay forever. But he wanted his son, and now there was nothing good left, apart from this fact. He was no longer young, with many beautiful thoughts and dreams to realize on his own. He was absolutely sure that Helen would not want him to be so alone. The second obstacle to achieving Charlie's goal, which is Marion, always assumes that her sister's death is all because of Charlie. Marion Peters is Charlie's sister-in-law. He cares for Honoria and loves her as much as the other family members. Marion, at first, appears to be a good woman. He protects and cares for Honoria since she is his daughter, and is afraid that Charlie is still an alcoholic and cannot take care of his daughter. So, when Charlie returns to Paris for custody of Honoria, Marion is adamantly against Charlie's wishes. For example, he gives Charlie a hard time for running to the Ritz bar as soon as he arrives in Paris, and he does it quite subtly: "I think you'd have had enough of bars." However, it appears that she objected due to her hatred towards Charlie rather than her good motives. Marion always assumes that her sister's death is all because of Charlie, as he locked Helen out of the house during a snowstorm. Although there is no real medical connection between the snow accident and Helen's heart attack, Marion still connects the two events in her.
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