Setting and Symbolism

The setting of "Babylon Revisited" is Paris, France, circa 1930, a year after the U.S. stock market crash that ruined the fortunes of many Americans. In the story's title, Paris is compared to the ancient biblical city of Babylon (on the Euphrates River, near present-day Baghdad, Iraq), which was famous as a hotbed of sin and vice. Like the Babylonian Jews of the Bible who surrendered their Mosaic law to worship Babylon's pagan idols, in his former life Charlie had been corrupted by Paris's licentious ways and had lost touch with his traditional American values. For Charlie, Paris is a beautiful but dangerous place. The Place de la Concorde retains its "pink majesty," and the facade of the Paris opera house remains "magnificent," but the busy allure Paris had when the Americans of the twenties ruled its nightlife is now gone. Paris, like the famous Ritz...