Lost to remembrance
I just read "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", which it seems is in the public domain.
What a sad, tragic tale. I don't know how the movie handles it, but the short story is one of the saddest thing I've read. (Actually, reading a plot synopsis online, I'm disappointed that the film doesn't explore the everlasting sadness of the short story and the awfulness of people. I'm not surprised.) No one understands Benjamin Button; the metaphor is plain. Neither his father, his wife, his son, Harvard/Yale, the Army or anyone else all the way down to the shopkeeper bother to understand, acknowledge or accept what is happening to him. It's happening outside of their ken. And so they find it alternatively absurd, stubborn or unseemly.
It's a story of a man who lived his life "the wrong way" and so, is alone. At various times, a character would look at him and cast him out.
"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate."
or
As a matter of fact," he added,
"you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better pull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his face crimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around and start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"
But it's really the end that is the most sad. For me, it hints at the death that awaits us all, and how no matter what we do in life, we are all just slowly dying. Near the end, the big fabulous exciting and important life of Benjamin Button ended, and in his death, his life and it's inherent curiosity ceased to matter.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were sleepy--there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial reams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.
He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed--there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried--that was all. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.
What a sad, tragic tale. I don't know how the movie handles it, but the short story is one of the saddest thing I've read. (Actually, reading a plot synopsis online, I'm disappointed that the film doesn't explore the everlasting sadness of the short story and the awfulness of people. I'm not surprised.) No one understands Benjamin Button; the metaphor is plain. Neither his father, his wife, his son, Harvard/Yale, the Army or anyone else all the way down to the shopkeeper bother to understand, acknowledge or accept what is happening to him. It's happening outside of their ken. And so they find it alternatively absurd, stubborn or unseemly.
It's a story of a man who lived his life "the wrong way" and so, is alone. At various times, a character would look at him and cast him out.
"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate."
or
As a matter of fact," he added,
"you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better pull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his face crimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around and start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"
But it's really the end that is the most sad. For me, it hints at the death that awaits us all, and how no matter what we do in life, we are all just slowly dying. Near the end, the big fabulous exciting and important life of Benjamin Button ended, and in his death, his life and it's inherent curiosity ceased to matter.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were sleepy--there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial reams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.
He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed--there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried--that was all. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.