The Curious Case of Benjamin Button recap

Benjamin Button is born in Baltimore in 1860 looking and speaking like a seventy-year-old man. His embarrassed father forces him into the outward role of a child, but Benjamin grows physically younger with every passing year. Rejected by Yale when officials mistake him for an elderly impostor, he later joins the family business and marries Hildegarde Moncrief, who is attracted to his mature appearance. As Benjamin becomes younger and Hildegarde grows older, their attachment weakens. He serves successfully in the Spanish-American War, then enters Harvard while looking like a college student and becomes a football star. His continued youth eventually makes even college impossible. He moves into his son Roscoe's home, regresses through boyhood alongside his grandson, and finally becomes an infant under a nurse's care. His memories and sensations steadily vanish until he loses all awareness.

In 1860, Baltimore businessman Roger Button arrives at the hospital expecting a conventional first child and finds an infant who looks about seventy years old, can speak, and objects to the discomforts of the nursery. The doctor and hospital staff react with outrage and embarrassment, while Roger fears the effect on his family name. He buys the smallest adult clothes he can find, names the child Benjamin, and takes him home. Roger refuses to accept Benjamin's apparent age and requires him to wear childish garments and occupy himself with toys, though Benjamin prefers a cigar and the company of his grandfather.

Benjamin submits imperfectly to the childhood expected of him. As the years pass, he notices that he is becoming stronger, straighter, and younger-looking rather than older. At the chronological age of eighteen, he travels to New Haven to enter Yale. An official, seeing what appears to be a man around fifty, refuses to believe that Benjamin is the admitted freshman and orders him away as an impostor. Students join in mocking him, and Benjamin returns to Baltimore without beginning college. The episode establishes that documents and elapsed years cannot protect him from judgments based on his changing appearance.

Benjamin enters Roger Button's hardware business and proves energetic and capable, helping expand the family fortune as his appearance moves toward middle age. In society he meets General Moncrief and the general's daughter Hildegarde. Because Hildegarde strongly prefers mature men, she is immediately drawn to Benjamin and assumes that Roger is his brother. Benjamin does not disclose the circumstances of his birth during their courtship. Despite gossip about their apparent difference in age, they marry, and Benjamin begins the adult life that his looks now make possible.

Benjamin's marriage changes as he grows visibly younger while Hildegarde ages in the usual direction. The maturity that first attracted her disappears, and Benjamin becomes restless with their quieter domestic life. During the Spanish-American War he serves as an officer, performs with distinction, and returns with military honors. His public accomplishments cannot resolve the widening difference between husband and wife. Benjamin increasingly seeks the activity and company suited to the age he appears to be, while Hildegarde regards his youthfulness as a choice he should stop making.

Now looking like a young man, Benjamin finally attends Harvard. He becomes a celebrated football player and helps defeat Yale, reversing the rejection of his earlier visit. Continued youth soon makes him too slight to compete or fit among college students. He moves into the home of his adult son Roscoe, who is ashamed to have a father who looks younger than himself and presents Benjamin as his brother. Benjamin continues backward through childhood and attends kindergarten alongside his own grandson, who soon progresses beyond him. Under the care of a nurse called Nana, his world contracts to simple games, food, colors, and sleep. Memories of Hildegarde, business, war, and college vanish, and then even nearby faces and routines lose meaning. Benjamin passes into infancy and finally ceases to retain sensations at all, his awareness dissolving into darkness.

Benjamin's backward aging continues after his Harvard years. Looking increasingly like a boy, he goes to live in the household of his adult son Roscoe, who is embarrassed by him and tells others that Benjamin is his younger brother. Benjamin eventually becomes the same apparent age as Roscoe's son and attends kindergarten with his own grandson, but he soon falls behind as the other child advances normally. A nurse takes charge of him as he passes through toddlerhood and infancy. His memories of business, marriage, military service, and college disappear, followed by his ability to recognize people or understand the world around him. At last even light, warmth, hunger, and dreams cease to form lasting impressions, and Benjamin's awareness fades into complete darkness.