Brief, funny, but prefound: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

簡短有趣又深刻的好書推薦：《本杰明.巴頓奇事》

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讀過太多從搖籃到墳墓，感慨過太多青春不再。時間像一段列車，帶走我們的青春歲月。

讀《本杰明.巴頓奇事》，倒看時間的流逝，人生會有別樣一番感悟。

本杰明的人生就像二戰(zhàn)后虛假繁榮的美國一樣，看似風光，卻是如人飲水冷暖自知。

Hypocrisy Under Beautiful Surface

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, written by F. Scott. Fitzgerald in the Jazz Age, reflects the depraved spiritual life of people at that time. In the fiction, Benjamin was born as an old man, and became younger and younger until he died without consciousness as a baby. Benjamin had a normal life, in which he went to schools, got married, and brought up children, as most people did. However, he went through all of these in a totally opposite time order——from 70 to 1, which can be viewed as an indication to the abnormal spiritual crisis he would have to experience in his life.

Although Benjamin was born to a family with enviable social and financial position, he could not get rid of the destined spiritual crisis happened between him and his father, his wife, and even his son.

Benjamin’s father felt ashamed of having such a son. On the day Benjamin was born, Mr. Button, who expected to have a son as the successor, was frightened and felt desperate on seeing him. It is widely accepted that parents always love their children whatever they look like, but Mr. Button was not such a father. As a people of high position, he took the appearance of his child as a big case, which was related to the fame and dignity of the Button family, so he could not accept the abnormality of his son. Even when Benjamin looked younger at the age of 20, Mr. Button was still not willing to accept that Benjamin was his son in public places, which revealed his hypocrisy. Therefore, Benjamin did not have a close relationship with his father, for which he had never got real paternal love.

Benjamin got married with Hildegarde impulsively. Benjamin and Hildegarde fell in love with each other on the first sight, but they only judged each other by appearance. Benjamin was appealed by the beautiful face of Hildegarde as a twenty—year—old boy with the appearance of a man of fifty. While Hildegarde was also attracted by Benjamin’s mature appearance. She told Benjamin: “You’re just the romantic age, I’d rather, marry a man of fifty”（Chapter 5, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button）, but she did not know his real age. However, love for appearance cannot keep forever, because appearance changes with time, so as time passed, their love decreased gradually. Benjamin and his wife cannot taste real happiness because they were both blinded by the fake surface.

Benjamin had an abnormal relationship with his son—Roscoe. Just as Benjamin and Mr. Button, he and Roscoe did not have a usual relationship between a father and a son. Usually, a father looks more experienced than his son, and is respected and admired, but Roscoe did not. The appearance of Benjamin made Roscoe feel ashamed, so he said: “When visitors are in the house, I want you to call me Uncle, not Roscoe”(Chapter 9, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) , which indicated that Roscoe felt uneasy to have a father who looked so much younger than him. However, whatever parents are like, children should take the responsibility of taking care of them when they are old. It seemed that Roscoe’s indifference towards Benjamin had an excuse, which is appearance, but it was just an excuse. Roscoe did not really care about his father compared with saving his face in public.

In the three relationships of Benjamin, we could see the hypocritical spirit under the seemingly beautiful surface. Because of the hypocritical spirit, Benjamin went through spirit crisis throughout his life, and at last he died without consciousness. His death revealed that the fake relationships between people are destined to collapse at last. Through such a metaphor, Fitzgerald criticized the depraved Jazz Age.

References:

[1] Fitzgerald. F. Scott. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 1922

[2] 成麗.淺析菲茨杰拉德短篇小說《本杰明·巴頓奇事》中的魔幻現(xiàn)實主義色彩[J].延邊教育學院學報,2011,25(02):12-14

[3] 左寶霞.菲茨杰拉德短篇小說《本杰明·巴頓奇事》多重主題分析[J].新課程學習(下),2015(02):190-191.