The plot of “Babylon Revisited” moves through time and space, and its movement conveys its theme. This theme suggests that the past and the future meet in the present. Fitzgerald dramatically expresses Bergson's idea that duration is the continued progress of the past that forces the future. In the story, Charlie Wales relives the disastrous events of his past in a few days, and he realizes in the brilliant final scene at the Ritz Bar that time is irreversible, that the empty glass in front of him is the emptiness of his entire life . , past, present and future. At the beginning of the story, Charlie intends to erase the memory of his past by finding his lost child, but the reality of the past overruled his perspective from the start. Charlie's unfulfilled desire for his family suggests that an emotional debt accumulated over periods of reckless abandonment and unrestrained indulgence will eventually need to be repaid. By following Charlie's storyline, the moral point of the story becomes clear: excessive and immoderate behavior will eventually lead to breakdown. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The very title of the story suggests the movement between time and space, and similarly, the rest of the story also focuses a lot on the concept of the passage of time. Throughout the first part of the story, Charlie continually tries to go back in time. During dinner at the Peters', he looks at Honoria and feels that he "wanted to go back a whole generation." Likewise, throughout the first part, all references to time belong to the past. There is a change in focus in time in the second part. Charlie wants to forget the horrors of his past, so much so that he deliberately chooses a restaurant that "is not reminiscent of champagne dinners and long lunches that began at tea and ended in a hazy, vague twilight." Charlie wakes up to another “bright, fresh day” as the fourth part of the story opens. Separating the past and the present for a moment, Charlie looks toward the future, believing for a moment that the past does not determine the future: “He made plans, perspectives, futures for Honoria and himself.” But this glimpse of the future is quickly thwarted by a look back at past visions: "Suddenly he became sad, remembering all the plans he and Helene had made." Viewing the future as not quite real and the past as a shattered dream, Charlie thinks of the present: “The present was the thing – a job to do and someone to love.” Some argue that the past is completely inescapable, Bryant Mangum asserts that Charlie's "reckless 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 representation of human beings caught in the past. Its power lies in its investigation of the relationship of human beings with this past..