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
After lunch with the patients (a chore that Dick dislikes) he returns to the villa to find Nicole angry with him. She has received a letter from a recently discharged patient that accuses him of “having seduced her daughter.” It is true that Dick once kissed the girl, “in an idle, almost indulgent way,” but he denies any involvement with the girl, saying, “This letter is deranged.” Nicole is upset but Dick tells her authoritatively to forget all about it.
In his youth, Dick had wanted to be a good, honest man, but here it’s clear how lost he’s become when he lies directly to Nicole’s face about his involvement with the woman in question. He also accuses the patient of being “deranged,” using her ill health as a reason to distrust her. Dick is extremely manipulative here, and he further exerts power over Nicole by commanding her to pay no attention.
Themes
In the car with their children and the nanny, Nicole’s silence troubles Dick. When they arrive at their destination, the fairground, Nicole is slow to get out of the car. When Dick asks her to get out for a second time, a “sudden awful smile” stretches across her face. After ambling around the fairground for a short while with the children, Nicole runs away into the crowd very suddenly. Leaving the children at a stall, Dick chases after her, darting desperately through the tents and stalls. He finds her on a Ferris wheel laughing so hysterically that a crowd has gathered to watch her.
Again, Nicole’s illness manifests itself on her mouth, which Dick recognizes immediately in her “awful smile.” The reader witnesses another of Nicole’s breakdowns here as she runs away from her family and breaks into uncontrollable laughter. With the image of a crowd watching Nicole as she descends into a fit of hysteria, Fitzgerald elicits sympathy for her.
Themes
Dick implores his wife to calm down, but she is furious about her husband’s involvement with “a child, not more than fifteen,” comparing him to the fictional character Svengali. At the suggestion of going home, Nicole shouts at Dick in a wavering and voice, “And sit and think that we’re all rotting and the children’s ashes are rotting in every box I open? That filth!” Dick is relieved to see that Nicole’s outburst has calmed her down, and as Nicole’s face softens, she begs Dick to help her.
With her reference to Svengali—a fictional character from the 1895 novel Trilby—Nicole accuses Dick of seducing and exploiting young girls, citing this as the reason for her unhappiness and subsequent breakdown. Nicole screams about boxes of filth filled with children’s ashes. Here she could be referring to the fact that her own childhood and innocence were robbed from her by her father’s abuse, symbolizing the death of her childhood self. The words “rotting” and “filth” are reminiscent of her father’s name, Devereux, which means “worm-ridden.” Perhaps Nicole worries for her children, particularly Topsy, as a young pretty girl around Dick, who clearly has a perverse and disturbing attraction for young girls.
Themes
While Dick searches for Lanier and Topsy, Nicole stands apart looking “evil-eyed,” “resenting” and “denying the children.” The Divers find their way to the car and begin to make their way home, the children looking “grave with disappointment.”
Despite Dick’s flaws, he is always very caring with the children. Nicole, on the other hand, distances herself from them, perhaps because they remind her of Dick or of herself as an abused and traumatized child.
Themes
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On the car journey home, Dick feels the car swerve “violently” and realizes that Nicole has a “mad hand clutching the steering wheel.” The car shoots off the road completely, coming to a stop upon hitting a tree. Dick rushes to lift the children out of the flipped car while Nicole laughs “hilariously, unashamed, unafraid, unconcerned.” Seeing the children’s frightened faces, Dick has an urge “to grind her grinning mask into jelly.” Dick instructs the children to walk up to a nearby inn and ask for help; neither Lanier nor Topsy look at their mother as they leave.
This passage forms the story’s climax: in a fit of rage, Nicole intentionally swerves the car off track, resulting in a dramatic crash. The sight of Nicole’s mad, grinning smile once more triggers a spark of rage in Dick, and he feels the desire to beat her violently. The children don’t turn to look at Nicole as they rush to safety, symbolizing their rejection of her.
Themes
