But, it had been given for nothing. It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember - his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont," (Fitzgerald 313). Their money was not just thrown away; it was spent to satisfy the lifestyle in Paris. The author describes these actions as "an offering to destiny that he might not remember," which can be interpreted as a contribution to self-destruction. Self-destruction, in that, the efforts were not contributing to anything positive in Charlie's life, rather contributing to the spotlight that was blinding Charlie from seeing what he knew was important to him. His wife had died and his daughter was taken from him as a result of his reckless lifestyle. Fitzgerald portrays this lifestyle of luxury only to enhance the theme of emptiness felt by Charlie, upon his return to Paris. .
While "Babylon Revisited" has its own plot of a man traveling to Paris to reclaim custody of his child, Honoria, Fitzgerald attempts to reveal a more important, underlying plot of Charlie's past. This underlying plot builds up as Charlie reaps all the benefits of living in the Babylon-like city of Paris, but the climax comes when the stock market crashes and Paris and Charlie are brought to their knees losing everything they once treasured. Fitzgerald does not use a traditional narrative structure when building this underlying plot. The plot is structured differently from the traditional narrative structure because the climax has already occurred in the past and is discovered through Charlie's memories and reactions to the changes he recognizes in Paris. The climax comes not as a single moment of the story, but as an emotional climax to Charlie's past. The reader realizes that this story is not about a struggle to regain custody of his daughter, but a story of a man who invested too much of his life into a life of dissipation and useless consumption and not enough into the things he has now possibly lost forever, his family.