How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #4
His first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedaled Lorraine all over the Étoile between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was a nightmare. Locking out Helen didn't fit in with any other act of his life, but the tricycle incident did – it was one of many. How many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility? (4.13)
This is an interesting passage, because it complicates our understanding of the word "dissipation" in "Babylon Revisited." At first, we assumed that Charlie was talking about the dissipation that occurred after and as a result of the stock market crash. But here, he talks about dissipation before the crash. This second use of "dissipation" is in line with his statement at the end of the story that he lost everything he wanted in the boom, not in the crash.
Quote #5
His first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and pedaled Lorraine all over the Étoile between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was a nightmare. (4.13)
In 1929 Fitzgerald indeed stole a baker's tricycle and pedaled all over Paris with it, "thumping the Russian doormen with a long loaf of bread" (Source: James R. Mellow, Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1984). Here we see that some of Charlie's shame and embarrassment at his juvenile behavior might reflect Fitzgerald's own regret.
Quote #6
Marion shuddered suddenly; part of her saw that Charlie's feet were planted on the earth now, and her own maternal feeling recognized the naturalness of his desire; but she had lived for a long time with a prejudice – a prejudice founded on a curious disbelief in her sister's happiness, and which, in the shock of one terrible night, had turned to hatred for him. It had all happened at a point in her life where the discouragement of ill health and adverse circumstances made it necessary for her to believe in tangible villainy and a tangible villain. (4.41)
Fitzgerald makes it clear that Marion sees Charlie as a symbol, and that she uses him as a whipping boy for everything she hates about people like him. We start to feel that her attitude towards him just isn't fair. After all, why should Charlie take the fall for the faults of his entire generation? And yet, isn't this what Fitzgerald asks of his character as well? To represent the wasteful extravagance and too-late regret of a generation of Jazz Age drinkers and party-goers?