The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1922

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Symbols & Motifs

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Symbols & Motifs

Wars and History

The wars of Benjamin’s era are a recurring motif in the story and shape his experience of time, place in society, and sense of identity. As he ages backward, history moves forward, and it is only when he is in the prime of life that age and history are brought into alignment. First, the outbreak of the Civil War when Benjamin is four years old distracts the Baltimore elite from the sensation created by the Buttons’ unusual toddler. The Civil War helps Benjamin save face later in life as well when he publishes his father-in-law’s 20-volume “History of the Civil War,” thereby earning his favor.

The next major event is the Spanish-American War in which he participates in the Battle of San Juan Hill, ascends the military hierarchy, and returns home a decorated war hero. At this stage of life, his age and appearance correspond, and as a result, he can be a full participant in his historical moment at the very peak of his powers. Unlike the old man he was and the teenager he’ll become, Benjamin in middle age knows who he is and is accepted by the world.

Finally, his frustrated desire to fight in World War I is a major turning point in his life, a humiliating experience of reverse aging that alters his sense of self and his family relationships. His experiences in the Spanish-American War provided him with clout and respect, but he is undone by his teenaged appearance and forced to accept the degrading treatment of his military underlings and a permanently diminished position relative to his son. The impact of the First World War on Benjamin is one of the most significant connections between the story and the early Jazz Age. And it resonates with Fitzgerald’s own biography in a world shaped by war.

Clothing and Social Appearances

Clothing is a symbol of social status in the story and conveys the message that acceptance will follow appearance. The comical early scene in which Roger Button frantically shops for his septuagenarian son shows his implicit understanding that social class is largely a matter of apparel. It doesn’t matter what Benjamin will accept—he finds the outfit preposterous—it matters that Benjamin will be accepted because that is the only way for Roger to maintain his “self-respect” (174).

By age 12, Benjamin has noticed that he’s growing younger, and he informs his father that he wants to “put on long trousers” (179). Roger initially refuses because long trousers are for boys of 14 and his outfits are “part of Roger Button’s silent agreement with himself to believe in his son’s normality” (179).

At the opposite end of his life, Benjamin again finds that age and social position correspond to appropriate clothing. Upon being called up for service in the First World War, he visits, the narrator says, “a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street” and asks “in his uncertain treble to be measured for a uniform” (191). The clerk condescends to him, assuming he’s playing dress-up. When he reports for duty, a sentry likewise asks him where he’s going “with the general’s duds” (192). Both men call him “sonny,” a humiliation compounded by the fact that he’s brought home like a chastised child by his own son who escorts “the weeping general, sans uniform, back to his home” (193).

Vehicles and Technological Change

Fitzgerald marks the passage of time through the symbol of technological innovations in personal vehicles, luxury consumer products that double as symbols of wealth and social status. When Roger Button arrives at the hospital on his son’s birthday, he encounters a flustered physician who disavows Roger and his whole family before climbing, the narrator says, into “his phaeton [a fancy horse-drawn carriage], which was waiting at the curbstone” and driving “severely away” (170). This is Roger’s first intimation that his son could damage his social reputation.

Twenty years later, Roger and Benjamin enter a phaeton as they travel to the society event at which Benjamin will meet and fall in love with Hildegarde. Benjamin is now enjoying an age-appropriate appearance that corresponds to his aristocratic clothing, privileged mode of travel, and acceptance by his father and the world. Hildegarde arrives at the same party in a brougham, another type of carriage with connotations of class.

As the turn of the century approaches, Benjamin has achieved business success and wealth. In accordance with his physical and historical age, he finds himself, the narrator says, “more and more attracted by the gay side of life,” which manifests in the purchase of a technological innovation: “[H]e was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile” (186).

By the time the First World War breaks out, Benjamin is too young-looking to drive a car and has to hire a taxi cab to drive him to camp. Exiting the cab, he calls for the sentry to retrieve his luggage and receives a skeptical response that initiates the slide toward disrespect that will teach Benjamin a bitter lesson in the indignities of old age.