How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Zelli's was closed, the bleak and sinister cheap hotels surrounding it were dark; up in the Rue Blanche there was more light and a local, colloquial French crowd. The Poet's Cave had disappeared, but the two great mouths of the Café of Heaven and the Café of Hell still yawned – even devoured, as he watched, the meager contents of a tourist bus – a German, a Japanese, and an American couple who glanced at him with frightened eyes. (1.55)
Fitzgerald doesn't let his readers forget about the religious backdrop imposed on "Babylon Revisited" by the title. As Charlie is tempted by his old life of drinking and debauchery, we see the mouth of hell yawning open for him.
Quote #5
"I want to get to know you," he said gravely. "First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles J. Wales, of Prague."
"Oh, daddy!" her voice cracked with laughter.
"And who are you, please?" he persisted, and she accepted a role immediately: "Honoria Wales, Rue Palatine, Paris." (2.19-21)
Charlie pretends that he and is daughter are strangers, which is in part true at the moment. More importantly, it is a sign of what is to come – Charlie fears that he is losing his daughter and that he is running out of time to get to know her before she is an adult. In this conversation we see a vision of Charlie come back to Paris, years later, when his daughter is an adult, as he pretends here, and is also a stranger to him.
Quote #6
Going over it again brought Helen nearer, and in the white, soft light that steals upon half sleep near morning he found himself talking to her again. She said that he was perfectly right about Honoria and that she wanted Honoria to be with him. She said she was glad he was being good and doing better. She said a lot of other things – very friendly things – but she was in a swing in a white dress, and swinging faster and faster all the time, so that at the end he could not hear clearly all that she said. (3.57)
One interpretation of this passage is that it is an example of Charlie's tendency toward justification and self-delusion. Just as he pretends that he didn't leave his address for Duncan at the Ritz, he pretends that his wife gives permission for him to have Honoria, in order to ease his conscience.