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
Switzerland is home to heavenly natural landscapes and “the toy and the funicular.” It is appropriate, then, that Dick feels “like a toy-maker” as he pokes “delicately” at brains in the laboratory, with “infinite precision.” He pays little attention to the “irony of the gigantic Christ in the entrance hall.”
Dick enjoys the power he has as a doctor and feels almost god-like as he works in the laboratory.
Themes
Dick visits his friend Franz Gregorovious at Dohmler’s psychiatric clinic—“a rich person’s clinic.” Franz is “proud, fiery, and sheeplike” and “would without doubt become a fine clinician.” He asks Dick if he was “changed” by his experiences of the war, but Dick assures him that he “didn’t see any of the war.” Franz asks Dick frankly if he’s come to visit him “or to see that girl.”
Throughout the novel, the clinic symbolizes the boom in psychiatry during the early 20th century. Society was haunted by widespread psychological trauma in the post-war years and science surrounding mental health was developing quickly. For wealthy American families in Europe, it was easy to pay vast sums to send loved ones for treatment, out of the public eye.
Themes
It becomes apparent that Dick has been in contact with one of Franz’s patients at the clinic, who is now “perfectly well.” Dick recounts how he met “the young girl” by chance, last time he was visiting Franz at the clinic. Dick emphasizes that he hadn’t realized she was a patient and she “was about the prettiest thing [he] ever saw.” Franz reassures Dick, “dramatically,” that this chance meeting “was the best thing that could have happened to her,” but that he wants to talk with Dick about her in private before he can see the girl again.
The reader learns that Dick met a young girl—presumably Nicole—at a psychiatric clinic and that Dick has somehow, perhaps inadvertently, had a positive impact on her recovery. Dick is a brilliant psychiatrist and is well-regarded in his profession, hence why Franz, another doctor, has sent for Dick to consult on this case.
Themes
Pleasant pastures and “a fresh smell of health and cheer” surround Professor Dohmler’s clinic. Ten years ago, it had been “the first modern clinic for mental illness.” Waiting in Franz’s office, Dick’s thoughts return to the girl, who has written him dozens of letters over the past eight months. The first half of the letters he received from this girl were distinctly “pathological” in nature, but more recently, the letters have been “entirely normal.” Bored by his executive work in Bar-sur-Aube, Dick looks forward to receiving these letters.
Fitzgerald portrays how modern, private clinics were tasteful and cheerful, a far cry from traditional mental asylums or facilities. The reader is presented with more information about this case, whereas a patient—who has been in contact with Dick— has mysteriously recovered.
Themes
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Dick usually replied to these letters promptly, but if for any reason his letters were delayed, the girl would respond with a “fluttering burst of worry—like a worry of a lover.” At one point during their correspondence, a “red-lipped” telephone girl—who was “known obscenely in the messes as ‘The Switchboard’”—had distracted Dick from replying properly to the patient’s letters. When Franz returns to his office, he shuffles through some papers and prepares to tell Dick the story of this girl.
Dick’s correspondence with the patient was interrupted during his love affair with a girl he meets in France. The insult, “The Switchboard,” refers crudely to the fact the woman has many lovers. The patient seems to be dependent on contact with Dick, almost like “a lover” herself, foreboding Dick and Nicole’s future relationship.
Themes
