Toys Symbol Analysis

Charlie desperately wants to be more present in Honoria’s life. However, because he lives far away and sees her so rarely, he’s limited in the ways he is able to feel intimate with her. The primary way Charlie shows his affection for Honoria in “Babylon Revisited” is by buying her toys, but Honoria sees the gifts her father gives her for what they are: an inadequate material substitute for her father’s presence in her life. The toys, therefore, symbolize the estrangement of Charlie and Honoria’s relationship, despite that they both want to be closer to one another. In a broader sense, Charlie’s anger about only being able to give Honoria toys when he wants to give her love and family echoes his ambivalence toward wealth in general. On the one hand, he’s glad to be able to give Honoria gifts, but on the other hand he recognizes that the things he most wants cannot be purchased. Just as he boasts about his wealth to show Marion Peters that he can provide for Honoria better than she can, he uses toys to show his daughter that he cares, but in both cases, money alone fails to reassure others that he can be a responsible father, and it fails to get him what he wants, which is a family.