The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

“The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy.”

Positioning in social class is a major theme of the story and drives the concerns Roger Button has about his son. Fitzgerald indicates a satiric view of the aristocracy with his flippant reference to “the This Family and the That Family.” The “social and financial” benefits of the Confederacy are generated by a heinous slave trade, briefly glimpsed in the story, defended to the death just a few years later in the Civil War, the first of three major wars shaping Benjamin’s life story.

“The notion of dressing his son in men’s clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large boy’s suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst and to retain something of his own self-respect—not to mention his position in Baltimore society.”

Roger’s all-consuming concern for social position is repeatedly expressed in an obsession with proper clothing. How Benjamin appears in public will have major implications for Roger’s “self-respect,” which is inextricably linked to “his position in Baltimore society.” When Roger returns to the hospital with the clothes, Benjamin finds them ridiculous but is forced to put them on under threat of corporal punishment.

“By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that he was different from any other child—except when some curious anomaly reminded them of the fact.”

The Buttons’ ability to grow accustomed to Benjamin’s extraordinary condition mirrors the magic trick that Fitzgerald performs for the reader. By treating a fantastical topic as though it were a factual account, he generates a slowly growing acceptance of the story’s reality, distracting readers from logical and scientific questions that could collapse their suspension of disbelief.

“‘Old fellows like me can’t learn new tricks,’ he observed profoundly. ‘It’s you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great future before you.’”

Roger makes this observation to Benjamin during their trip to a dance at a time of life when they appear to be the same age. It is one of the instances where the characters reflect on the meanings of different ages and precedes Hildegarde’s somewhat contrary opinions on the benefits of maturity versus youthfulness. The idea that “youngsters” have a “great future” ahead of them may have rung bells for the post-war readership in the youth-oriented Jazz Age. The irony of the passages is that Roger and Benjamin are the same biological age.

“You’re just the romantic age […] —fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly-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.”

In contrast to Roger’s assessment of age, Hildegarde prefers older men—but not too old. Her classification of male age phases is belied by her misunderstanding of Benjamin’s true age: by the time he actually is 50, he will be anything but “mellow.” He’ll be in the midst of his partying years. And there’s a bittersweet foreshadowing because, when she is 50, her “romantic age” will be well behind her in Benjamin’s eyes.

“She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each one of us one day and stays with us to the end.”

Hildegarde is slowing down as she ages, and Fitzgerald makes an observation about aging and energy that speaks to a common human experience. Even Benjamin, though aging in reverse, is not immune to the “eternal inertia.” His strength and awareness diminish as he progresses toward infancy, an irreversible process that mirrors the gradual diminution of memory and vitality associated with advanced age.

“Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement of army life that he regretted to give it up, but his business required attention, so he resigned his commission and came home. He was met at the station by a brass band and escorted to his house.”

Benjamin’s success in the Spanish-American War is one of the high-points of his life. Fitzgerald espouses a romantic view of war as a proving ground of masculinity and a source of honor and pride. This type of portrayal is in stark contrast with depictions by modernist contemporaries like Hemingway, e. e. cummings, and Wilfred Owen, who saw World War I with their own eyes and reported on its dehumanizing brutality with chilling realism.

“‘The idea,’ she said, and after a moment: ‘I should think you’d have enough pride to stop it.’”

Hildegarde is embarrassed and indignant as the opposite progression of their ages becomes more pronounced. She implies that Benjamin could stop growing younger if he wanted to and is only refusing from a lack of “pride.” This scene examines the conflict between free will and fate. Benjamin has a sense of his agency and power but time and aging show him the limits of will and point to his ultimate unchangeable destiny: death.

“Roscoe was married now and prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in connection with his family.”

The social and class worries that Benjamin once caused for his father he now causes for his son. A generation later, the Buttons are still prominent in Baltimore society, but that position is always precarious and can be lost. The father-son reversal also hints at the real-life experiences of many fathers and sons (painfully elaborated, for instance, in Philip Roth’s memoir Patrimony) when the elder caregiver who once seemed so powerful becomes a powerless figure in need of care.

“But he found himself thinking persistently about the war. America had joined the Allied cause during the preceding month and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.”

Age and war are connected both legally and narratively. Throughout the story, the passage of time is marked by wars as the primary historic events that shape Benjamin’s reality. His inability to serve in World War I underscores his loss of identity since his Spanish-American War triumph. It also reflects Fitzgerald’s near-miss with combat, a major event in his real-life story.

“It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a ‘red-blooded he-man’—this was Roscoe’s favorite expression—but in a curious and perverse manner.”

Like Hildegarde, Roscoe attributes Benjamin’s de-aging to an embarrassing and inconvenient choice, rather than an unavoidable destiny. He also explicitly associates this choice with a failure of masculinity. The pain sons feel as their fathers decline is often tied up in this story with gendered insecurities and ideologies of personal willpower and self-reliance.

“Sometimes when other tots talked about what they would do when they grew up a shadow would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realized that those were things in which he was never to share.”

The reverse-aging premise that started as a comedy ends as a tragedy. Benjamin’s future is behind him, contradicting the optimistic assessment of his father many years before and perhaps striking a chord with post-war readers wondering if the shattering experience of World War I was over or just beginning.

“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.”

Benjamin’s final stages of de-aging are identical to many peoples’ real experiences of aging: a slow disappearance of memories accompanies a gradual disintegration of identity. Memories and dreaming are beginning to overlap, calling into question whether our sense of self is real or if it, like this story, is fantasy.