F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Lost Hope of Babylon RevisitedF. Scott Fitzgerald is known as the spokesperson for the "lost generation" of Americans in the 1920s. The term "lost generation" was coined by Gertrude Stein "to describe young men who had served in World War I and who were forced to grow up to find all the gods dead, all the wars fought, all the beliefs in man shaken” (Charts 489). Fitzgerald exemplifies the generation defined by Stein. His family, with the help of an aunt, sent him to prep school and then to Princeton University (Charters 489). Fitzgerald's family hoped that he would stop "wasting his time scribbling" and take his studies seriously (Charters 489). However, he left university before graduating and accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the regular army during World War I (Charters 489). During his military service, he spent most of his time writing his first novel, This Side of Paradise (Charters 489). The height of Fitzgerald's fame as a writer came with the publication of The Great Gatsby, in 1925 (Charters 489). Fitzgerald, writing in the third person, reflected fondly on the Jazz Age because "it bored him, flattered him, and gave him more money than he had dreamed of, simply for telling people that 'he felt what they felt, that something had done away with all the nervous energy stored up and unspent during the war' (Charters 489). During the 1930s and the Great Depression, Fitzgerald saw his own physical and emotional world collapse with the decline of his literary reputation and the breakdown of his marriage. Fitzgerald's final years as a writer "were truly wasted...writing Hollywood screenplays and struggling to finish his novel The Last Tycoon" (Charters 489). Fitzgerald wrote approximately 160 stories during his career (Charters 489). “Babylon Revisited,” written in 1931, is one of his later works. It is considered "more emotionally complicated" than his earlier works because it shows "less regret for the past and more dignity in the face of real grief" (Charters 489). “Babylon Revisited” focuses on Charlie Wales, a man who returns to Paris to retrieve his daughter and restart his family life with her. The title is appropriate because Charlie returns to Paris where, before the Great Depression, he and his wife lived a life of endless partying and spending, where everything had a price he could afford to pay..