Lit & Civ: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

*SPOILER ALERT*

I very much disliked the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" so I wasn't sure how much I would like the short-story. But I gave it a go, since my main problems with the movie were: the slow-as-molasses-Nawlins drawl and the fact that Daisy is hit by car, since I first watched the film a mere month after I was hospitalized from being mowed down by a Range Rover. (The only reason I went to see was because my acting coach is in it.)

So let's start with the basic differences between the film and short-story: location. New Orleans v. Baltimore. In the film, Benjamin was raised in New Orleans by an African American woman whose name I can't remember. In the story, his parents keep him. His major love in the film is Daisy, who does not exist in Fitzgerald's short story. Benjamin has a son with Hildegarde in the story but has no children in the film. Benjamin goes to college in the story, and I don't remember him going to college in the film. Finally, Benjamin was the size of a baby when he was born in the film but was 5'8" at birth in the short story, which is inconceivable.

A common theme between both, different as they are, is that Benjamin is an outsider. He cannot live a normal life and can relate to no one. The most powerful part of the movie is that Daisy understands and accepts him for who he is and even rocks him as he dies as a newborn baby and she an old woman. But without Daisy, that powerful love theme is completely completely lost in Fitzgerald's version. Not even Benjamin's own son, Roscoe, loves him. He is embarrassed by him. Benjamin dies alone in with his nurse.

The most prevalent theme in this short story is gossip, scorn from the community, and the loneliness caused by it all. I think that Fitzgerald wrote this story for everyone who is different, who doesn't quite fit in, or even anyone who has suffered from inconspicuous glances and whispers from those around them. Benjamin couldn't help the way he looked/aged but that didn't matter to his community, peers, family. Both his wife and son accuse him of "refusing" to stop his aging. Maybe, too, Fitzgerald was trying to get across that people fear what they do not understand and people ridicule what they fear.