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Just Born (appears 70)
Benjamin Button's birth is a horrifying disgrace, and yet he is as healthy as any 70 year old man. He contains a surprising amount of knowledge and experience from an unlived live. Benjamin is uncomfortable with being treated like a child from the beginning, and struggles with this for many years. -
Age 12 (appears 58)
Benjamin notices that his hair is getting darker, that his wrinkles are fading and his skin is beginning to contain a bit of color. He tells his father that he should be allowed to wear trousers.. He is growing more accoustumed to his life and his condition. "By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him....no longer felt that he was different from any other child."(68) -
Age 18 (appears 52)
Benjamin applies to Yale. He passes the examination and becomes a freshman. But when he goes to claim his schedule they refuse him. ""'The idea!...A mean of your age trying to enter here as a freshman." (70) -
Age 20 (appears 50)
Benjamin decides to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was the "'going out socially'" (71) -
Age 20 (appears 50)
Benjamin meets Hildegarde and falls in love. "A rigor passed through him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love." (72) -
Age 20 (appears 50)
Benjamin and Hildegarde get engaged and then married. Both the Moncrief family and the town are not in agreement with the joining of these two persons. "However, every one agreed with General Moncrief that it was 'criminal' for a lovely girl who could have married any beau in Baltimore to throw herself into the arms of a man who was assuredly fifty." (74) -
Age 35 (appears 35)
The Button business prospered due to Benjamin. "In the fifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and his father's retirment in 1895, the family fortune was doubled--this was due largely to the younger member of the firm." (74) -
Age 38 (appears 32)
Benjamin joins the war, largesly due to the fact that he wasn't happy with his marriage any longer. In the war, he is highly successfull. "At the ourbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little charm that he decided to join the army." (75) -
Age 50 (appears 20)
Benjmain enters Harvard as a frehsman. He is very succesful and prominent in his class. "But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football game with Yale he played so brilliantly....He was the most celebrated man in college." (78) -
Age 54 (appears 16)
Benjamin graduates from Harvard, looking but like a young freshman. "He was so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a freshman." (78) -
Age 57 (appears 13)
Benjamin, a Spanish-American Waer veteran, tries to join the war effort once again, but instead makes a complete fool of himself. He is regarded as a child. "'Whose little boy are you?'" (81) -
Age 65 (appears 5)
Benjamin goes to kindergarten. He does not fit in. "He cried because the other boys were bigger than he and he was afraid of them." (82) -
Age 70 (appears newborn)
Benjamin dies. "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." (83)