Plot
The plot of the story emphasizes the eccentricity of the storyline. The climax which takes place when he discovers "baby of threescore and ten" seems out of place because a climax typically occurs at the end. This odd strategy emphasizes the oddity of a seventy-year-old baby being born. Also, there is very little conflict during what would be Benjamin's teenage years. Normally, conflicts would be rampant in a story about a young adult, but his life seems to have very little conflict, especially with his parents. The typical rocky relationship between a parent and a young adult does not exist between Benjamin and his father; they're described as "companionable."
Point of View
The narrator is third person omniscient. The narrator explains in the beginning that Roger hopes the baby will be a boy so that he can go to Yale (chapter one, paragraph three). The reader is also informed of the fact that Benjamin feels "more at ease in his grandfather's presence than in his parents'" which could not be known by a limited narrator. This serves to create an emotional connection between the reader and Benjamin. By knowing his feelings, the reader feels the awkwardness of aging backwards and becomes more engaged in the story. It makes the story both more understandable and more interesting for the reader. Personally, once I started to understand Benjamin, I was much more interested in the story and finishing it than when I started.
Characterization
Fitzgerald uses direct characterization to give the reader an immediate sense of what each character is like. Roger Button is characterized as a coward from the beginning. When the doctor blows him off and implies that something is wrong with the baby, Roger loses "all desire to go into" the hospital because he doesn't want to face the circumstances. By presenting the reader with an immediate picture of each character, Fitzgerald is sure to evoke the reactions he wants. He doesn't give the reader the time or the reasons to doubt his evaluations of each character. The reader has almost no choice but to agree and see the characters as they're meant to be seen because there is no room for interpretation.
Setting
The narrator tells us on page 5 that the story is set in 1860. The setting makes the story somewhat more believable because a birth defect seems more likely. The time period also makes the family's disappointment more realistic. Roger Button would have hoped to pass his wholesale hardware business on to his son, but having a son with some sort of defect would ruin the possibility of that. Socially, the Buttons could be ruined by the fact that they had an odd son, and in the pre-Civil War era in the South, social status was important. Because of the setting, Benjamin's situation is exacerbated, and it becomes a huge issue in every aspect of his and his family's lives.
Theme
The theme of the story is that life is about perception. When Benjamin looks fifty, he's happy. He's not experiencing a mid-life crisis, and Hildegarde even says he's at "the romantic age." Most men at fifty perceive their lives as half over, and have a much less cheerful demeanor than Benjamin does at fifty. At the same time, he feels like he's missing out on the activities of a normal twenty-year-old's life. He perceives certain ages differently than everyone else does. He proves that a person's attitude about life is based mostly on his or her perception of life's events.
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