Absurdity Makes Sense

—— On the absurdity in the short story

“The curious case of Benjamin Button”

After finishing the text the Glass Mountain I became interested in the word “absurdity”. The dizzy
colors, the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood, the implausible plot and the surprising
ending……The scene depicted by the author represented me with an absurd but grand world,
attracting me to find more about “absurdity” and its link with Existentialism. And when I finished
reading “The curious case of Benjamin Button” (I had watched the movie before reading the
original short story), I was deeply enchanted by the setting, the plots, especially the absurdity inside
the story. Thus, I want to share some of my opinions.

The biggest absurdity in this story is the protagonist who ages backward. The older Benjamin
grows, the younger he looks. That actually a man can never be born with “a long smoke-colored
beard” implies the special time structure for Benjamin, which puts an emphasis on his totally
different life path from others. With the ability to rejuvenate which is actually impossible in real
life, Benjamin’s life seems dramatic and absurd.

For one thing, he seems to be misfit in every occasion due to his appearance which doesn’t match
his age: He couldn’t adapt to the kindergarten life but he got along well with his grandfather; he was
mocked in Yale University because all his classmates and the registrar thought him passing himself
off as a freshman; and when he was actually a fifty-seven-year-old military veteran who was
capable of taking the position of general, he received nothing but the colonel’s perfunctory smile
due to his child-like appearance. His life path is so unusual that his existence seems weird and
strange in the society.

For another, as Benjamin has a different feeling about the passing of time and experiences unique
emotional changes, the author gives us a minute account of Benjamin’s emotions and interpersonal
relationships. We can be informed from the text that his father couldn’t accept him at first, trying his
very best to conceal the truth in front of the public. His relationship with his wife was based on kind
of sexual impulse, which drove him to chase after her crazily but also let him trapped in the
boredom of marriage when his wife wasn’t beautiful any longer. Also, when Benjamin became
younger in his old age, his son didn’t allow his father to call him “son”. Benjamin’s bizarre
relationships with his family, in which the term “love” is fragile and false, represent how depressed
and distorted the emotions and spirits were at that time.

All these above convey a message to the readers of the spiritual crisis concealed under the material
representation of debauchery and luxury. The controversy inside the story fully reflects the illusion
which enchanted most people in the 1920s and the chaos in fact. A lot of people, like the protagonist
Benjamin, spared no effort pursuing wealth and fame but achieved nothing at last. When the
traditional values of faith were lost, those people failed to chase the true meaning of their life. Their
dreams broke into pieces of disillusionment, leaving only the decadence and despair of the soul.

When employing the existential perspective to perceive the world, the inevitable outcome of the
contradiction between society, nature and man is the absurdity. People are alienated and separated
from others, their existence is absurd. Fitzgerald also created a bizarre atmosphere to signify the
absurdity, using some peculiar words to describe the unreal scenery, such as “motionless air
aromas”, road covered by “lusterless color of platinum”, and the “translucent” country “as in the
day”.1 “The curious case of Benjamin Button” is such an absurd story, the ending of which is
desolate and sad, making readers sober up from the voluptuous fantasy and reflect on the reality.

References:
邹颖萍，何群立.菲茨杰拉德荒诞艺术初探.1995
赵劲鹰.菲茨杰拉德短篇小说的存在主义解读.2012

1Just a personal opinion…I haven’t found any comments or essay to support it so actually I don’t know the
author’s real purpose to depict the scenery in this way…