Note 1

Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he

saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into
one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years
of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a
long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned
by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with
dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.

In this passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's peculiar novel The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mr. Button is meeting his newborn for the first time, but is frightened with shocking skepticism about the child. The case with the child is unheard of because the description of a newborn exceeds into the characteristics of a 70 year old man, practically forcing Mr. Button to reject and push away this "infant." F. Scott Fitzgerald's heightened and ridiculous diction of the old man ignores the disheartened sentimentality of the newborn child, leaving the child drowning with incredulous questioning and judgmental rejection. "Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket," writes Fitzgerald, "...there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age," as if age is a factor of defining a human rather than personality. The narrator describes the newborn's appearance as "sparse hair  almost white" along with innocent "faded eyes." Age, in fact, seems to be the most important feature of a person in this passage: "...and from his chin dripped along smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window."Fitzgerald's dispassionate description suggests the sorrowful, uneasy feeling of age in this world, a dramatic, impartial element that is found in everyday life.