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
When Dick meets Baby in Zurich that September, she expresses her concerns about Dick’s plans to marry Nicole, citing that her family don’t know anything about him or his motives. Dick is irritated by Baby’s disapproval and even considers abandoning the whole affair. The only thing that stops him from doing so is the arrival of Nicole at their table, “glowing away, white and fresh and new in the September afternoon.”
Despite his better judgment, and warnings from his colleagues, Dick has decided to marry Nicole. It is perhaps because he considers himself superior to Nicole that he finds Baby’s concerns particularly frustrating. This passage marks the beginning of a tension between Dick and Baby that is reflected throughout the novel. The repetition of the description of Nicole as “white and fresh” emphasizes the notion that Dick desires Nicole for her youth and innocence. Later, however, his affair with Rosemary indicates that Dick was never fully satisfied with Nicole’s purity or innocence, which he sees as tainted and sullied because of her father’s sexual abuse.
Themes
Nicole insists that she and Baby settle their financial affairs with the lawyer. She has inherited much more money from her family’s estate than expected but plans to live a quiet life with Dick in Zurich and reassures her sister that she can be responsible with her inheritance. Some time later, talking with Dick, Nicole reflects that their life together is both “funny and lonely” and she worries that she loves “the most.” Suddenly, Nicole is somewhere else, asking somebody to phone her husband, Dick. She mourns for an unnamed woman and her dead baby, saying “there are three of us now.” Next, she’s in a restaurant on vacation, imploring Dick to let them move to a bigger apartment and insisting that she’ll pay.
Here, the narrative deteriorates into a series of disjointed thoughts and descriptions. Through the shift from third-person narration to Nicole’s confused account, Fitzgerald reflects the period of ill health after her marriage to Dick. Nicole’s perspective is distinctly sad and confused, thus eliciting sympathy for her from the reader. The issues of money reoccur several times through Nicole’s account, highlighting how this creates a power dynamic between Dick and Nicole, with the former not wanting to spend any of her money.
Themes
Next, Dick and Nicole are singing nonsense to themselves from the deck of a boat in Italy. Strangers stare at them and Nicole senses that Dick has become tired of singing with her. Looking toward the sea, with the wind in her hair, Nicole feels like a carving of Pallas Athene on the front of a ship.
Here Nicole refers to herself as a representation of the Greek goddess, Athena, carved in the front of the boat. Athena, Zeus’s daughter, is the goddess of arts, wisdom, and war, and she was also born from her father’s head. The suggestion that Nicole has sprung from her father—compared here to a powerful sky god—suggests that Nicole may feel that Mr. Warren’s sick and evil characteristics might have been passed onto her. On the other hand, in Greek mythology, Athena defeats her father, not through fighting him, but by learning from his strengths. Nicole’s comparison to Athena, then, might suggest that the abuse she experienced has made her stronger, and that she is capable of overcoming her childhood trauma.
Themes
Nicole remembers all the countries she has visited with Dick She recalls that “I was gone again by that time […] That is why he took me travelling.” But after their second child, Topsy, was born, “everything got dark again.”
The fragmented passages in this chapter distort the sense of time passing, and it is impossible for the reader to know when each of these memories took place. This reveals to the reader how disorienting it must be for Nicole to experience the world around her as a mentally ill person.
Themes
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Nicole and Dick buy a house in a small village on the French Riviera and move there with their two children. Nicole wants Dick to have a place to work undisturbed and she is happy to have her friends, Mary and Tommy Barban, close by. Nicole recognizes that Tommy is in love with her—only “gently,” but enough for him and Dick to disapprove of each other.
It appears that Nicole’s health improves as a result of the stability provided by their new house in France, and by being surrounded by friends. Interestingly, Tommy Barban represents war, and bearing in mind that Nicole has recently described herself as Athena, goddess of war, this association foreshadows a potential relationship between Nicole and Tommy down the line.
Themes
Nicole is on the beach with her family, translating a recipe for Chicken à la Maryland into French. They spot Rosemary, who she doesn’t recognize. Nicole thinks that Rosemary is “lovely,” but that “there can be too many people.”
This passage mirrors an earlier one in Book 1, where Rosemary observed Nicole copying out a recipe on the beach. Rosemary hadn’t noticed that Nicole was unwell, but now the reader understands the event through Nicole’s disorienting perspective. This chapter brings the reader back to the events at the beginning of Book 1.
Themes
