Babylon Revisited
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was not recognized as such when Hemmingway wrote Big Two Hearted River. If it were, Nick would have been diagnosed and treated. Instead, he goes out to heal in nature. Nick knows he can heal his body and mind by getting back to nature, fishing and camping. Nature helps him heal, and he sees some of the conflicts he faced in the burnt woods are different, but the trout are in the stream and the hills where they always were in the distance. Nick is different, the grasshoppers are black to blend in with the burnt woods, but Nick is now free to make his own choices, and he chooses to start to heal.
In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the rivers are older than history, older than humans are. Langston Hughes tells of the universal human “I” who, since the birth of humankind partook of the abundance of the world’s great rivers. He speaks of the American rivers, the workers singing and the way the rivers are wound in and out of the lives of his people, his ancestors and his culture.
In Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited," Charlie Wales is the bad boy that we hate to love. Marion Peters is the good woman that we should respect and value, buts she is just so annoying it makes it hard. It is not that she does not do all the right things; she is genuinely concerned for Honoria and if she is suspicious of Charlie, it is not without good reason. She took Honoria in and takes care of her as if she were her daughter and not her niece. But still she is like one of those self righteous church ladies who have spent so much of their time being good and doing good that they have no way of reaching out and understanding the failings of other, less rigidly self controlled humans. She is like an old librarian who hasn’t giggled in so long she just automatically the laughter of anyone around her.
