Atlantic County Library System issued the following announcement.
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 [bit.ly/38ErEQg]. 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.
UnCovered review by Collette Jones, Branch Manager, Egg Harbor City Branch.
#atlanticcounty #ACLSreads #ACLSuncovered
Original source can be found here.
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