Before reading the short story, I had seen the movie the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The movie however has little to do with the story. The plot of the movie does not follow that of the short story. In fact, I believe the people who wrote the movie script just like Fitzgerald's idea of aging backwards and built another story around that, but kept the title of Fitzgerald's story.
Other than comparing movie to story, I thought it was interesting that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this. I did not know who had written this until this class, and I am somewhat shocked to find out it was Fitzgerald because he totally broke away from his traditional style of writing when he wrote this fantasy piece.
The idea behind this came from what some sources say as a quote from Mark Twain. You can find the source here. Paraphrasing what was said..It's a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end. On a weird note, Fitzgerald apparently called this story, the funniest story he had ever written, which is kind of odd, I think. Any one else think that's weird?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
You're right, Deirdra. The story was definitely different from the movie. What confused me most was that he was born old-man sized. I mean, this does make sense with the whole aging backward phenomenon, but it doesn't seem physically possible. His mother is also rarely mentioned after that.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. I wonder how she survived and if she possibly just tried to stay hidden away after such an odd birth.
ReplyDeleteI agree and I really find it out that the filmmakers behind Benjamin Button seemed to just take the name and the reverse aging idea from the story and came up with a completely different storyline for the film as opposed to the short story. I could never really get into the movie because I just found everything a little bit weird and forced at times, and after reading this, I wish that they would have filmed a more faithful adaptation of the story because I think that it may have made for a more interesting movie.
ReplyDeleteIs this the Twain quote you mean, Deirdra? "Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."
ReplyDeleteFitzgerald's other well-known fantasy story is the tall tale "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," but you're right that it and "Benjamin Button" are anomalies in the Fitzgerald corpus.
You Fitzgerald fans should visit the Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, located in the apartment where Scott and Zelda once lived.