Charlie Wales In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited

The greatness of ‘Babylon Revisited’ lies within the story itself as it includes and opens up so many themes without providing actual answers to most of the question, one being about Charlie Wales’ character, which for some is the most important mystery of the short story.
On the surface, the story is about a father’s attempt to regain custody of his daughter, furthermore, Fitzgerald uses Charlie as a channel to present the change of the times (Bodine par.1)
Bodine in his “Overview of "Babylon Revisited”” suggests that Charlie’s quest to win Honoria back is also a quest to prove to himself and others that he is a radically changed man. It is a valid point, given that only a year and a half before he was an unemployed alcoholic living in a broken marriage, spending time with morally corrupt friends and being immoral himself. Now he is presented to his sister-in-law, old friends and also to the readers as a new man who is once again sober and employed. Even Charlie makes a distinction between his new and old self ; when he plays-pretend with Honoria at the restaurant he introduces himself in the following way: "First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles J. Wales, of Prague"(Fitzgerald in Bruccoli, BR 621).
Despite all of the above, the question of whether he is a changed man remains. There is a

In the fifth part of the story Charlie converses with Paul the barman about the "great change" wrought by the stock market crash the year before. When Paul mentions that he heard Charlie had lost his money in the Crash, Charlie replies, "I did, but I lost everything I wanted in the boom" (Fitzgerald in Bruccoli, BR 633). Here he not only means the financial allusion, but also “selling short” as in giving up one’s principles. Fitzgerald combines Charlie's personal history with the history of his age (Bodine