When describing Benjamin’s frustration with how Hildegarde has changed over the course of their marriage, the narrator uses a metaphor and imagery:
In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste.
The metaphor here—“the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery”—compares Hildegarde’s eyes to dishware. While, at the start of their relationship, Benjamin saw her eyes as being made of “blue enamel”—a rich indigo material commonly used for expensive pots and kettles—he now sees them as “cheap crockery,” insinuating that they are like cheap dishware dyed blue. This metaphor helps readers to understand the extent to which he has fallen out of love with Hildegarde as she ages normally and he ages in reverse.
The imagery here—“her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown” and “she had become […] too anemic in her excitements”—similarly helps readers to visualize Hildegarde’s natural aging process through the eyes of a younger Benjamin. The word “anemic” is usually used to describe someone who looks pale and lethargic. While it’s likely that Hildegarde lost some of her energy and vitality while aging, the language of “unexciting brown” and “anemic in her excitements” says more about Benjamin than about Hildegarde. As he “ages” into a young man, he wants to be with someone who matches his particular developmental state, and the middle-aged Hildegarde certainly does not.
In the final lines of the story, the narrator uses imagery to capture Benjamin’s experience of moving backwards through infancy to non-existence (or death):
Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness. Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.
The imagery here is gentle and subtle as Fitzgerald tries to capture how a newborn experiences the world. Sensory language like “Over him there were soft murmurings […] and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness” along with “the warm aroma of sweet milk” helps readers to hear, smell, and see this scene for themselves, the way that an infant might.
The way in which the narrator moves readers from these subtle sensory experiences to everything going “dark” helps them to understand that, though Benjamin has “died,” it was a peaceful departure. Because Benjamin has aged in reverse, he does not experience death with an adult’s mind—capable of feeling fear and distress—but with a child’s mind, which has no preconceptions about what dying means.
