Marion, however, doesn t realize this and thinks Charlie goes to the bars for the sole purpose of drinking. No matter how hard he tries, he can t please her. Marian never really liked Charlie from the start but has held a grudge ever since the time when she and Lincoln took Honoria into their care because of Charlie s drunken rages. Like his wife, Helen, Charlie must face his fate of being left out in the cold. At the end, he bitterly thinks of all the previous abuse, which shows that he is approaching a new level of understanding concerning what money will buy and what it will not.
Money can t, for example, change or stop natural wonders, like snow.
Ghosts, whose universal condition is in exile and homelessness, are also referred to in the story as symbolic. Charlie is also haunted by Helen, whom he sees in a dream, clad in angelic white. This story becomes clearer when we see how Fitzgerald's own life experiences provided material for his fiction. In many ways, Fitzgerald s unsteady financial situation paralleled Charlie s. Other experiences Fitzgerald shared with Charlie include their battles with alcoholism and their days in Paris.