The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” As I will argue, Fitzgerald’s story exemplifies how literature not only reflects processes of social transformation, but also actively partakes in the negotiation of the cultural meaning of temporal structures–and in this particular case, the effects of what sociologists call the institutionalization of the human life course, or simply “normal biography.” As sociologist Martin Kohli argues, the social transformation in modernity is therefore essentially the process of a “temporalization of life” (“ Gesellschaftszeit ” 184).Ģ The present article borrows this notion of the temporalization of life in modern society, using it as a starting point and conceptual hinge for the discussion of F. 1 Whereas in traditional societies place was the main factor for maintaining a stable identity as well as social status and security, the processes of mobilization in modernity required a different form of social and individual stability. the ways in which life is structured on a temporal level, are not only culturally and historically variable, but have also tremendously gained in significance in modern society. However, the patterns of sequencing, i.e. As a consequence, “people throughout the world necessarily have to deal with time as an element of their lives as self-conscious humans,” as Joan Silber succinctly remarks (107). It might be a universal, biologically predetermined fact that life unfolds in a temporal sequence: People are born, they grow up, and finally grow old (and eventually die) in all cultures and historical epochs, at least until today. 1 See Georges Poulet’s classic Studies in Human Time (1956), especially the introduction, for an info (.)ġ In the process of modernity, time has become a crucial category and an increasingly important dimension of human life.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald