The Price Not Given for Nothing: Capitalist Alienation in Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited

This essay analyzes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited through a Marxist literary lens to explore the theme of capitalist alienation in 1930s post-crash Paris. It argues that the story reveals how capitalist values corrode genuine human connection by distorting individual self-perception and interpersonal relationships. The essay identifies three key manifestations of this alienation: the commodification of selfhood, where personal worth is reduced to market value; the reification of human relationships, transforming individuals into objects; and the instrumentalization of others, where people are treated as means to an end. Through the character of Charlie Wales, the essay demonstrates how these intertwined phenomena—commodification, reification, and instrumentalization—undermine the possibility of true redemption and expose the dehumanizing impact of capitalist social relations, ultimately cautioning against the erosion of human connection and ethical values by market logic.