The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales of the Jazz Age Book

The curious case of Benjamin Button, as a slightly melancholic and in its absurdity somewhat humorous, surreal tale on time and (non) conformism, could in a sense be read as a satirical allegory on ageism avant la lettre. (Or maybe I did so).

"You're just the romantic age," she continued ' "fifty. Twenty-five is too wordly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is'oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty."

To everything there is a season. But as no man is an island, others might have fixed or preconceived ideas on what might be the appointed or appropriate time for certain life events happening to us and how we should be and behave at specific moments in life, even if the desirable behaviour or bringing about such events is beyond our control and we are helpless and unable to change so we fit into the frame of normality or in the plans of our relatives or larger society. Why be happy when you could be normal? If we have to live on someone else's terms, societal norms and standards might collide with our identity and condition and cause friction and chasm even with our near and dear when they cannot accept we digress. In presenting Benjamin Button's case, depicting the insensitive and petty responses of both outsiders as well as Benjamin's father, wife and son on Benjamin's various stages of life and development, Fitzgerald caustically shows how deviance meets with shame, irritation, rejection, ridicule, shock and denial. Our loved ones are not always willing nor able to transcend their own frame of reference in perceiving and accepting us as we really are, even if this might make us thoroughly unhappy.

She sniffed again. "The idea," she said, and after a moment: "I should think you'd have enough pride to stop it."
"How can I?" he demanded.
"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."
"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."
"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want to be like anyone else. You always have been that way, and you always will be. But just think how it would be if everyone else looked at things as you do ' what would the world be like?"


(© Postertext)

Of thoughtful satire and social criticism one can expect it speaks for itself. I wasn't particularly taken with the story, nor did I find any specifically enlightening insights on age or aging in it, but ostensibly such didn't seem the purpose of the story. The prose however, on the moments it quits the more outspoken satirical register, flows delicately and lyrically, movingly mellowing nearing the ending while Benjamin reaches the innocent sweetness of infancy, soothing like a lullaby.

"And when the long day was done at five o'clock he would go up-stairs with Nana and be fed oatmeal and nice soft mushy foods with a spoon. 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."