I was at Barnes & Noble today looking for a copy of “Eat, pray, love” when i bumped into a small fifty something page book. On the cover it read “The curious case of Benjamin Button” a short story. Since i never saw the movie I took it home. I just finished it and it took me about an hour, I’m assuming about two hours less than the movie. 

Fitzgerald creats a world that is fantastical and dream like, yet realistic with his use of tone and style. A man of seventy six going to preschool, and a man of fifty a freshman in Harvard. This is reality of Button. He was wrapped in a blanket and shoved into a baby’s basin looking seventy six because it what you’re supposed to do with newborns. His life has humorous situations like this. Also there is the longing for the past he had when he was in his prime, to this many can relate to today. 

Though the story was written about  a century ago, it reflects modern day’s society’s view on age and aging. The reality of your age has nothing to do with what age you appear. When Button was five he was forced to play with toy trains when all he wanted was to smoke a Cuban cigar and read the Encyclopedia. Nowadays we have men and women dying their hair, getting liposuction, face lifts, neck lifts, brow lifts and all kinds of lifts lifts. All this in order to appear a younger age than they are. Why?, because of the same reason Button was forced to dye his hair at five, society’s opinion. He was a decorated ARMY veteran that was scoffed at and turned away after returning for duty because he appeared fourteen. Now we see a forty year old with high levels in a video game and he is praised in come parts of the world. Our age shouldn’t carry that much weight, it should be our knowledge and experience that count. The people in this story were scared of the unknown. There was something different about this man’s life and that was that he didn’t care about his age, all he wanted was to be happy. Society never faced him, he always did what he wanted, sure there was talking and pointing, but at one point or another he accomplished what he set himself out to do.

Although stigmas are still present I think i can say that we have all come a very long way from a century ago. People are still scared of what they don’t know or can’t explain. They avoid it, reject it, and even ridicule it.  All because they don’t understand it. More and more this changes and it makes me really happy that I can see it happening. Never the less prejudice still exists and is not going anywhere any time soon. If more of us opened our minds to the foreign, and what appears strange we could learn so much. I assure you that if someone had sat down with Button a lot of his problems could have been avoided. 

Go learn something strange.

9,997

PS

I actually had written this already, but smart me hit the refresh button so it all got erased. Doubt is a good as before.