The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Thinking that the movie was adapted from the book and so reading would be as good as watching, I picked up a copy and was left rather dumb-founded. The two are certainly complete strangers except for bearing the same name of the main character. The movie I was told would be a three-hour long story telling while the short story was well, short. And from what I later found out by going through some movie commentaries, the movie adaptation would be very different from its original text, perhaps right to its intended creation. As far as I can tell, the written text was a witty attempt to discuss what I would call it a bad joke played on the protagonist, leaving him going through life’s ups and downs, literally so. It somehow has a wicked sense of humor when the ageing process took an opposite direction and thus, as Benjamin Button grew in age and in his emotional capacity, his physical realm became younger and eventually back as that of an infant near his death. Only a moment in his life was he satisfied and had been able to enjoy his life, that was when he had the body of one in his thirties, and the rest before or after were but episodes on a wrong identity in a wrong age, or time as the pun suggested. I cannot imagine how one would feel if one were to land in his plight, being rejected by his father since his birth,  then resented and ostracized by the society through his growing years. Then his wife, presumably the only one person who has chosen him for who he is both in the appearance and in truth too, drifted apart from him after a mere decade or less. And finally, the one who was once a rejected child was again rejected by his child when he became a child in and of old age.  Indeed, after reading the book I was no longer curious about the movie but more so on what exactly was the intention of F. Scott  Fitzgerald. Was that a lamentation of his own spiritual quest for that Jazz Age? Was it in a way a reflection of some kind? That is what I would title the curious case of Benjamin Button.