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
Eventually, the three psychiatrists agree that Dick must let Nicole down gently. However, he bumps into her immediately upon leaving Dohmler’s office. She speaks happily of leaving the clinic soon with her sister, Beth, explaining that everyone calls her “Baby.” Dick looks at Nicole in a new light, realizing just how breathtakingly beautiful she is. Gazing back at Dick, Nicole considers his two sides—the trained, considered Dick, and “his more masculine side.”
Dick is under Nicole’s spell, and he finds it very difficult to break up with her. Again, Fitzgerald reveals the two different elements of Dick’s personality. There is the carefully constructed and finessed performance of a charming, young gentleman as well as the rawer, hedonistic Dick who pursues his desires. Despite Nicole’s illness, she might be the first person to recognize this dualism in Dick.
Themes
Nicole prattles on about how her language skills have improved at the clinic, but it makes Dick “sad when she brought out her accomplishments for his approval.” Dick encourages Nicole to think of life beyond the clinic, but when he instructs her to return to America and fall in love she replies, “I couldn’t fall in love.” Nicole’s world falls “to pieces” as she realizes that Dick is distancing himself from her.
Dick has played a dangerous and cruel game with Nicole, leading on a vulnerable young patient just to let her down when it no longer suits him. He feels guilty about how he’s treated Nicole, however, and tries to help her move on and think of the future. Nicole’s life, meanwhile, is so miserable that the clinic is the only home she has.
Themes
Changing his mind that evening, Dick sends a message for Nicole, but she declines to join him for dinner. He feels “discontent,” but supposes that her decision to stay away has “freed him.” Surprised that Nicole hasn’t reached out to him, Dick calls Franz. Franz assures him that Nicole has understood, and that “it was the best thing that could have happened.” Dick wonders whether Nicole’s feelings for him ever really ran deep.
Dick’s ego is wounded by the idea that Nicole might have never really loved him that much anyway. Nonetheless, he recognizes that he has been “freed” from a life shackled to a psychiatric patient and supposes he should be glad. This notion that Dick is trapped, confined, and imprisoned with Nicole, is acutely sexist and undermines the fact that it was Dick who decided to pursue her and has the power in their relationship.
Themes
