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
A strong feeling of “dissatisfaction” overcomes Dick for weeks. He spots Nicole once, outside the Palace Hotel, and she looks back at him “in an expression of fright.” Realizing the full extent of his feelings for her, Dick tries to distract himself with work and the telephone girl from France.
Dick feels wounded and almost jealous that Nicole seems to be doing just fine without him. In fact, she is frightened when she sees him, probably because his face reminds her of the rejection and suffering has caused her. Unable to have Nicole, Dick involves himself with another woman.
Themes
Cycling to Montreux, Dick notices how many groups of English people there are. Taking the Glion funicular, Dick marvels at its ingenuity and admires the scenery from the cable car. The passengers in the compartment are interrupted when a young man and woman, Nicole, scramble excitedly inside. Dick notices a difference in Nicole immediately: “she [is] the first morning in May and every taint of the clinic [is] departed.”
Dick runs into Nicole by chance and is overwhelmed by the power of her beauty and her incredible recovery since leaving the clinic. There is a suggestion that the clinic wasn’t helping Nicole, after all. The fact that she appears with another man probably makes Dick feel jealous.
Themes
Nicole introduces her companion as Conte di Marmora. When Nicole teases Dick, asking him to take her on his bike handlebars, Marmora protests saying, “I will roller-skate you—or I will throw you and you will fall slowly like a feather.” Nicole delights in this compliment, overjoyed “to be a feather again instead of a plummet, to float and not to drag.”
Arriving in Glion, Nicole introduces Dick to her sister, Baby. He promises them that he’ll drop by for dinner and as he leaves them behind, he feels her love “twist around inside him.” He realizes that he has no memory “of the intervening ten minutes,” and feels drunk on the thought of “how much he was loved.”
Dick feels intoxicated by Nicole’s beauty and love. It is as if she has an enchanting power over him—so potent that Dick, a logical, scientific man, seems to lose his bearings.
Themes
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