In the following excerpt, Baker examines the themes of freedom and imprisonment in "Babylon Revisited," focusing on Charlie's characterization.

A kind of change came in my fate, My keepers grew compassionate, I know not what had made them so. They were inured to sights of woe. And so it was: - my broken chain With links unfastened did remain  And it was liberty to stride Along my cell from side to side. - Byron, "The Prisoner of Chillon"

Fitzgerald once called "Babylon Revisited" a magnificent short story. The adjective still holds. It is probably his best. Written in December, 1930, it was first published February 21, 1931, in the Saturday Evening Post, whose editors must have recognized its superior qualities, well above the norm of the stories from his pen that this magazine had been publishing for the past ten years. Collected in Taps at Reveille in 1935, it stood proudly...