The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (short story)

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in Collier's Magazine on May 27, 1922 with the cover and illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg. It was subsequently anthologized in Fitzgerald's book Tales of the Jazz Age, which is occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories.[1]

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
1922 magazine cover
AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Short story
Published inCollier's
Publication typeMagazine
Media typePrint (magazine)
Publication dateMay 27, 1922

The story was later adapted into the 2008 namesake film and the 2019 stage musical.

Plot

In 1860 Baltimore, Benjamin is born with the physical appearance of a 70-year-old man, already capable of speech. His father Roger invites neighborhood boys to play with him and orders him to play with children's toys, but Benjamin obeys only to please his father. At five, Benjamin is sent to kindergarten but is quickly withdrawn after he repeatedly falls asleep during child activities.

At the age of 18, Benjamin enrolls in Yale College, but is sent home by officials, who think he is a 50-year-old lunatic. When Benjamin turns 20, the Button family realizes that he is aging backwards.

In 1880, when Benjamin is 20, his father gives him a control of Roger Button & Co. Wholesale Hardware. He meets the young Hildegarde Moncrief, a daughter of General Moncrief, and falls in love with her. Hildegarde mistakes Benjamin for a 50-year-old brother of Roger Button; she prefers older men and marries him six months later, but remains ignorant of his condition. Years later, Benjamin's business has been successful, but he is tired of Hildegarde because her beauty has faded and she nags him. Bored at home, he enlists in the Spanish–American War in 1898 and achieves great triumph in the military, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He retires from the army to focus on his company, and receives a medal.

In 1910, Benjamin, now looking like a 20-year-old, turns over control of his company to his son, Roscoe, and enrolls at Harvard University. His first year there is a great success: he dominates in football and takes revenge against Yale for having rejected him years before. However, during his junior and senior years he is only 16 years old, too weak to play football and barely able to cope with the academic work.

After graduation, Benjamin returns home, only to learn that his wife has moved to Italy. He lives with Roscoe, who treats him sternly, and forces Benjamin to call him "uncle." As the years progress, Benjamin grows from a moody teenager into a child. Eventually, Roscoe has a child of his own who later attends kindergarten with Benjamin. After kindergarten, Benjamin slowly begins to lose memory of his earlier life. His memory fades away to the point where he cannot remember anything except his nurse. Everything fades to darkness shortly after.

Similar stories
First appearance in Collier's, May 27, 1922, p. 5.

Fitzgerald, in his introduction to the story, remarks that he came across a similar plot in Samuel Butler's Note-Books several weeks after publishing Benjamin Button.

In 1921, British novelist Oliver Onions published a novel, The Tower of Oblivion, about a man of 45 who begins to age backward, to grow younger.

A story with a similar plot was published in 1921 by the Austrian author Roda Roda in Die sieben Leidenschaften (The seven tempers; Rikola Verlag, Vienna 1922) under the title "Antonius de Padua Findling". J. G. Ballard's 1961 story "Mr F. is Mr F." features a man who regresses from adulthood to infancy when his wife becomes pregnant.[2]

Manuel de Pedrolo's 1975 Trajecte final ("Final journey")[3] collection of short stories contains a story ("El regressiu" - "The regressive") set in a dystopian future with strict birth control in which a man starts regressing in age when he hits 78 and dies as an infant.

The short story "Angel of the Backward Look" by Jennifer Loraine is about a man who starts to get younger, losing height and weight and regressing in age and mental ability.

In W. P. Kinsella's 1986 novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, the character Marylyle Baron tells a tale about "strange happenings" in Johnson County, Iowa: "The Backwards Plague" struck in the early 20th century. Young men and women in their late teens to early twenties suddenly started losing body mass. Eventually, they regressed to their birth weight, looking like newborn babies. At that point the plague stopped, and its victims began to grow again.[4]

In T. H. White's The Once and Future King, an Arthurian fantasy novel published in 1958, Merlyn the magician is depicted as living backwards through time.

In the comic 2000 AD, issue 308, 19 March 1983, there is a story by writer Alan Moore and artist Mike White called "The Reversible Man," which starts with the man lying on the ground having died and he travels backwards through his life getting younger. He sees his children get un-born and he un-meets his wife and he regresses to babyhood and is eventually un-born himself.[5] Another story based on a similar plot is The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a novel by Andrew Sean Greer. Ray Bradbury's 2001 novel From the Dust Returned contains a short story ("Make Haste to Live") in which an old woman is born in a grave and regresses in age as time passes.[6]

Damon Knight's short story "Backward, O Time" is set on a world where everyone lives life backwards. The story follows a man who is "born" in a car crash, and follows him to the point when he "meets" his mother.

In Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's 2000 Arabic short story "A Different Kind of Legend," a part of the author's mini novel series Paranormal, the main character, Dr. Refaat Ismael, is treated by a mysterious man who claims he can restore youth. After that the Dr. begins to grow younger and records his feelings and daily events in his diaries. He goes from a grumpy old man to an energetic man to a carefree teenager to a helpless child in a few weeks. He is an infant when he is eventually rescued by his friends who reverse the paranormal spell.[7]

2008 Penguin Classics cover. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Tales.

References
  1. F. Scott Fitzgerald (2008). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-310549-7.
  2. The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1, pp. 345-361
  3. Trajecte final, ISBN 8429762175
  4. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, pp. 69-71.
  5. Moore, Alan, and Mike White. "The Reversible Man," 2000AD, prog 308. (IPC, 19 March 1983)
  6. 1920-2012., Bradbury, Ray (2001). From the dust returned : a family remembrance (1st ed.). New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0380973820. OCLC 45505966.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6011768#bookDetails
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