Benjamin Button

By ashleyt3

  • At age 70

    Benjamin is born as a 70 year old man. While in the hospital nursery, he seems to be angry about how they are treating him, and is complaining about every aspect of the hospital and the nurses taking care of him: "I wish you's get me out of this place--or, at least, get them to put a comfortable rocker in here" (63).

  • At age 12 (really 58)

    Ony day, while looking in a mirror, Benjamin makes the astonishing discovery that he looks younger than he used to. He this goes up to his father and says, "I am grown . . . I want to put on long trousers" (68).

  • At age 18 (really 52)

    Benjamin passes the examination and becomes a member of the Yale College freshman class. While at a meeting with the college registrar, Benjamin Button was called "a dangerous lunatic" for saying he was eighteen years old and was threatened with "eighteen minutes to get out of town." While leaving the college, he was chased down by a mob of angry college students, to which he replied, "You'll regret this!" (70-71).

  • At age 20 (really 50)

    For his birthday, Benjamin decides to go work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. In that same year, he began "going out socially" by going with his father to several fashionable dances, one at which he met his future wife, a girl "with hair that was ashen under the moon and honey-colored under the sputtering gas-lamps of the porch" (72).

  • At age 30 (really 40)

    It was in this year that Benjamin Button discoved he was becoming more and more attracted to the joyful side of life. However, there was one problem. Since Benjamin was getting younger as the days went by, his wife was growing older. Because of this, he lost all attraction to her: "Her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery . . . [she] was to sober in her taste" (75)

  • At age 38 (really 32)

    Benjamin decides to join the army during the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, after realizing that his home had so little charm for him. After joining the army, he was "obtained a commision as captain," and then after he proved so adaptable to the work, he was "made a major," and finally "a lietutenant-colonel" (75-76).However, because his business required somuch attention, he resigned his commision and came home.

  • At age 50 (really 20)

    Benjamin enters as a freshman at Harvard University in Cambridge where his success was largely due to his performance during the football game against Yale: "He played so brilliantly . . . that he score seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for Harvard" (78). However, because he was getting younger and was beginning to lose weight, he barely "made" the team in his junior year and did not make it at all in his senior year.

  • At age 54 (really 16)

    Instead of Benjamin being the mature man that he once had been, his son, Roscoe, begins to sort of take over the "father" position. "When visitors are in the house," Roscoe says, "I want you to call me 'Uncle--not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do you understand? (79).

  • At age 57 (really 13)

    Benjamin is thrilled when he receives a letter that informs his that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish-American War wre being called back into service with a higher rank. However when he gets there, he is asked questions like "want to play soldier, sonny?" and "where you goin' with the general's duds, sonny?" (80). Discouraged by these remarks, Roscoe materializes from Baltimore to escort "the weeping genersl, sans uniform, back to his home" (81).

  • At age 60 (really 10)

    Roscoe Button's first child is born when the grandfather is only a few years older than the baby. During the attendant festivities, "no one thought it was 'the thing' to mention that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the new baby's own grandfather."

  • At age 65 (really 5)

    Benjamin and Roscoe's child are now the same age so they can play childish games together under the supervision of the same nurse. They are also both sent to kindergarden where "Benjamin found that playing with little strips of colored paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world."

  • At age 70 (really 0)

    Benjamin spends his last days in a white crib, having forgotten all the memories of his lifetime. The meories of "the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill, the first years of his marriage . . . the days when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house . . . all these had faded" (83). At the last second of his life "it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him . . . faded out altogether from his mind" (83).