The plot of “Babylon Revisited” moves through time and space, and its movement conveys its theme. This theme suggests that the past and future meet in the present. Fitzgerald dramatically expresses Bergson's idea that duration is the continuous progress of the past pushing towards the future. In the story, Charlie Wales relives the disastrous events of his past in a few days and realizes, in the brilliant final scene at the Ritz Bar, that time is irreversible, that the empty glass in front of him is the void of his entire life. , past, present and future. At the beginning of the story, Charlie intends to erase the memory of his past through the recovery of his lost son, but the actuality of the past has thwarted his perspective from the beginning. Charlie's unfulfilled longing for his family suggests that an emotional debt accumulated in times of reckless abandon and unfettered indulgence will eventually have to be repaid. Following Charlie's plot, the moral point of the story becomes clear: excessive and immoderate behavior will ultimately lead to collapse. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe title of the story itself suggests movement between time and space, and similarly, the rest of the story also focuses heavily on the concept of the passage of time. Throughout the first part of the story Charlie continually tries to turn back the clock. During dinner at the Peters' he looks at Honoria and feels that she "wanted to go back an entire generation." Likewise, throughout Part I, all references to time are in the past. There is a shift in emphasis over time in Part II. Charlie wants to forget the horrors of his past, so much so that he deliberately chooses a restaurant that "does not recall the champagne dinners and long lunches that began in the morning and ended in a vague twilight." Charlie wakes up to another "bright, crisp day" as Part IV of the story opens. Separating past and present for a moment, Charlie looks to the future, believing for an instant that the past does not determine the future: "He made plans, prospects, a future for Honoria and for himself." But this look to the future is soon undermined by a look back at visions of the past: "Suddenly he became sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made." Seeing the future as not quite real and the past as a broken dream, Charlie thinks of the present: "The present was the right thing: work to do and someone to love." Some argue that one's past is entirely inescapable, Bryant Mangum argues that Charlie's "careless past" prescribes his failure, and Jeffrey Meyers argues that Charlie is "captured and enslaved by his past", he is "irrevocably trapped by his own past". The strength of this story, however, does not lie in this easily perceptible depiction of human beings caught up in the past. Its power lies in the investigation of human beings' relationship to that past.