UnCovered review
by Collette Jones, Branch Manager, Egg Harbor City Branch
The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was
published in Colliers magazine in 1922 and later anthologized in Fitzgerald’s
short story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age. The
story describes events in the life of Benjamin Button, who is born in Baltimore
in 1860 as an aged man, who proceeds to age backwards over the course of the
story. It remains one of Fitzgerald’s better-known short stories and was
adapted in 2008 into a feature film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The
story illustrates that a good book is worth reading 100 years later. It is a
quick, fantastical read.
We learn that a child was born in
1918, the same year the clockmaker created his clock for the train station. The
child, though only an infant, appeared as an elderly man and was abandoned by
his father on a doorstep after the mother passed away while giving birth to
him. The child is found by a woman named Queenie and a Mr. Weathers who
work at the nursing home where the infant was abandoned. Queenie chooses to
raise the child, and with the years passing, the young man, Benjamin grows up
with the mentality of a child in an old man’s body. At his youthful age, he
appears as if he is as old as every person in the nursing home. He struggles
with his hearing and his eyesight and understanding. When Benjamin is 12 he
meets a young girl, age 7, named Daisy, and they become very close friends.
Eventually, Benjamin leaves Queenie
and what he has known as home and joins a tugboat crew, as the Captain believes
him to be far older than he is truthfully. Benjamin is constantly mistaken as
being an older man as his body grows and he seems to become more and more
youthful. Benjamin volunteers to join the Captain in salvage work and survives
the crew, including the Captain, as he continues to get younger and stronger in
body, mind, and spirit.
Benjamin then returns to his home
in New Orleans and to his adopted mother, Queenie, and also reunites with Daisy
shortly after. And, finally, Benjamin learns the identity of his father,
Thomas, whom he meets as while suffering a terminal illness. He learns that
Thomas has a button factory, which is bequeathed to Benjamin, as is his estate.
Two years pass, and Benjamin
strikes out to New York City where Daisy lives as a dancer in the ballet, but
he learns that she has fallen for another man and is crushed. It isn’t until
years later that the two meet again after Daisy has been injured in Paris
ending her dancing career, but she demands he not stay around, as she is
devastated by her injury. Eventually, Daisy returns to New Orleans and they
begins a love affair resulting in marriage and a daughter.
Benjamin fears that his
reverse-aging will not allow him to be a good father and decides to leave his
new family, leaving behind a bank book so that they will always be taken care
of financially. Ten years later, Benjamin arrives back in Daisy’s life, but she
is remarried and their daughter is much older. Daisy hides Benjamin’s true
identity from everyone and admits that he made the right choice to leave. They
have a final night of romance before Benjamin leaves this time for good.
Their paths would cross one final
time as Daisy, whose name was found in Benjamin’s diary, is called by a social
worker who has found a young Benjamin displaying early signs of dementia,
though he looks as young as 12. Daisy cares for Benjamin until his death. He is
an old man in an infant’s body. His death comes one year after the clock in the
train station, which had been running in reverse since 1918 was replaced. Daisy
has told this story to her daughter so she would finally know the true identity
of her father. Even though this story is 100-years-old it is a good story that
deserves to be read all over again.