Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tender Is the Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Excess, Destruction, and the Failed American Dream
Gender, Mental Illness, and Psychiatry
The Pursuit of Youth and Innocence
Racism and Otherness
Summary
Analysis
Nicole, Rosemary, and Dick feel suffocated by the city that morning. Dick is “profoundly unhappy,” but his inflated ego prevents him from noticing a change in Rosemary, who feels weary and impatient. When she requests a favor from the Divers—that they pass a message onto Collis, should he arrive—Nicole rebukes her sharply.
The party is discontented and the magic and excitement of their recent adventures seems to have evaporated. Nicole scolds Rosemary, as if she were a child, suggesting not only that Rosemary is immature and spoilt, but also that that she has more authority than Rosemary.
Themes
Left alone with his wife, Dick notices a “flash of unhappiness on her mouth.” Nicole is aware how people like Rosemary might interpret Dick’s “interest and enthusiasm,” but she also knows that he has never “spent a night apart from her since their marriage.”
Fitzgerald implies that Nicole has a degree of understanding about what is happening between Rosemary and Dick, but she also acknowledges that Dick has been a good and loyal husband to her. Through the “flash of unhappiness on her mouth” Fitzgerald draws a parallel with Nicole’s struggle with mental health, when Dick also detects her unhappiness on her mouth.
Themes
Collis Clay joins them at the restaurant, and Nicole leaves the men to talk. Dick likes Collis, especially because he is rather “post-war.” Dick is startled, however when he realizes that Collis is confiding in him about Rosemary. He claims that Rosemary had gotten into trouble doing “some heavy stuff” behind a locked door of a train compartment, with drawn curtains, with “a boy named Hillis.” Hearing this, Dick experiences “waves of pain, misery, desire, desperation.”
Dick finds young Collis refreshing, particularly because he embodies the hope and optimism of the younger generation, who escaped the horrors of the war. Dick is drawn to innocence and youth because they offer an escape from the trauma and corruption of his generation, who were touched by the war. Dick feels physically sick when he learns that Rosemary might have been sexually involved with a man. He feels deceived and betrayed because his attraction to Rosemary lies in her supposed innocence and purity.
Themes
Dick twice pictures Rosemary in the compartment with Hillis, hearing an imaginary snippet of conversation between them: “—Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?—Please do. It’s too light in here.” Collis seems unbothered by this anecdote and continues chattering about other things, but Dick again thinks about the blinds in the train being pulled down.
Dick tortures himself by imagining a possible conversation between Hillis and Rosemary. The image of the blinds being drawn to close out the light symbolizes the loss of Rosemary’s innocence and purity. Virginity is often conceptualized in terms of whiteness and lightness. Therefore, when Rosemary consents to the light being shut out, she welcomes the loss of her lightness and purity. Dick is deeply disturbed by the possibility that Rosemary might no longer be a virgin.
Themes
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Dick heads to the bank to cash a check. He pauses to think. He finds himself in an “unhappy predicament,” and he is unsure which of the bank clerks will be least likely to ask questions. The check is authorized, and Dick leaves the bank, calling a taxi to the “Films Par Excellence Studio.” Once more, Dick hears the echoes of Rosemary’s imaginary conversation with Hillis—“Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?”
It is not clear what Dick’s financial conundrum is, but the narrator suggests that Dick might have engaged in something corrupt or questionable because he is embarrassed for the bank clerks to ask him questions. This passage provides yet more evidence that Dick might not be the charming American gentleman he presents himself to be. Dick is completely consumed by the imaginary conversation between Rosemary and Hillis—so much so that he decides to pay Rosemary an unorthodox visit at her studio.
Themes
Arriving at the studio to try and find Rosemary, Dick is “swayed and driven as an animal.” He realizes that this is “a turning point in his life” and that his behavior is “out of line with everything that had preceded it.”
Dick’s composure begins to unravel as he is overcome with jealousy. Having learned that she might not be so innocent after all, Dick is motivated by animalistic, physical desire for Rosemary.
Themes
