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
Dick and Nicole decide to return to their house in Tarmes, on the French Riviera. They travel a little to “German spas and French cathedral towns” in the meantime, and Lanier and Topsy give them purpose. Dick has become more interested in the children as they’ve grown up. Lanier is “an unpredictable boy with an inhuman curiosity,” while Topsy is “exquisitely made like Nicole.” Dick used to worry about this, but he has recently observed that she is “as robust as any American child.” Dick is closer with the children than Nicole is, but nonetheless he is strict when it comes to teaching good manners.
Dick and Nicole retreat back into their old life of leisure and traveling. Dick is strict with the children, perhaps gaining some form of control over his life through his ability to determine the way his children are raised. His unsettling comment about Topsy makes reference to the troubling father-daughter relationships throughout the novel. However, Dick assures himself that his relationship with her is entirely paternal.
Themes
Since withdrawing their financial investment in the clinic, the Divers have been very rich indeed. Their wealth allows them to travel in an absolutely “fabulous” manner. The locals watch in awe as Dick, Nicole, and the children arrive off the train in Italy, for example. The servants bring the Divers’ many bags of luggage onto the platform and organize them using a method Nicole devised when traveling with her ill mother as a child, which is “equivalent to the system of a regimental supply officer.”
This scene, of the beautiful Diver family descending from the train with all of their many fabulous belongings, reminds the reader of younger versions of Dick and Nicole—breathtaking and almost theatrical in their splendor. Nicole is compared to a “regimental supply officer,” depicting her as capable, efficient, and practical. It seems that Nicole is well at the moment, and almost independent.
Themes
Mary North—now a Contessa—has recently remarried. Her new husband, Conte di Minghetti, is a “ruler-owner of manganese deposits in southwestern Asia.” He is noticeably foreign-looking and not fair-skinned enough to travel “south of the Mason-Dixon” line. He has about him the appearance of a “Kabyle-Berber-Sabaean-Hindu,” which is preferable to Europeans than “the mongrel faces of the ports.” Mary and her husband’s house is grand and “princely,” and as she greats the Divers, “two half-veiled” women stand behind her.
Mary North’s new husband has earned his wealth through trading an industrial metal compound. Mary’s marriage to a foreign man reflects the shift in race relations underway at the beginning of the 20th century—up until this time, it would have been unheard of for a white woman to marry an Asian man. Conte di Minghetti’s vast wealth allows him to pass as high-class, in a way that grants him access to white, European social circles. Nonetheless, both Dick and the narrator express racist attitudes toward him, insensitively conflating many different cultures together (“Kabyle-Berber-Sabaean-Hindu) in order to highlight his difference as a non-white person.
Themes
Once inside their bedroom, Dick and Nicole discuss Mary’s new situation. Dick is shocked by her choice of husband—“Abe educated her, and now she’s married to a Buddha.” Nicole has learned that Mary’s husband has “two very tan children” from a previous marriage and that one of them is ill with a strange bug. Nicole worries about her children catching his disease, but also frets that she’ll offend Mary if she’s seen keeping Lanier and Topsy away.
Dick is offended by the notion of Mary, a white woman, marrying someone foreign. He has become less and less tolerant of racial difference in recent years, and he considers Mary’s marriage a threat to his own racial supremacy. Dick and Nicole both exoticize and “other” Mary’s husband, and his children, by suggesting that the child’s illness is inherently threatening and dangerous because he is foreign.
Themes
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Over dinner that evening, Dick talks with Mary’s husband, Hosain. Dick is drunk and tells Hosain ridiculously exaggerated stories about America. Nicole rebukes Dick later, telling him off for drinking too much and for using the word “spic.” Dick apologizes, saying, “I’m not much like myself anymore.”
Dick gets drunk at dinner and patronizes Hosain with unlikely stories. It probably makes Dick feel important and powerful to abuse Hosain’s naïve trust. When Nicole tells Dick off for using “spic,” a racist slur, Fitzgerald reveals that the Divers are well aware that this is racist and unacceptable. Nicole is embarrassed, not that Dick is racist, but that he would use the slur in front of Hosain and Mary.
Themes
The next day, after Dick and Nicole have returned from shooting, Lanier announces that he had to take his bath in the same water as the sick boy, and that “it was dirty.” Nicole whirls around in horror and Dick instructs Lanier to take another bath. Just then, one of the women who’d been veiled yesterday enters the Divers’ bedroom. Dick enquires after the sick boy Tony, and instructs the “Asiatic woman” that, next time, she must drain the bath water and clean the bath before drawing Lanier a new one. The woman is “thunderstruck” and rushes out of the bedroom “crying.”
The Divers are disgusted by the thought that the foreign boy might have contaminated Lanier with his strange and exotic disease. The Divers make a big mistake in assuming that the foreign-looking “Asiatic” woman is a servant. They are used to seeing people of color in subservient roles—as servants, cleaners, and drivers—and they fail to realize that they have greatly offended Hosain’s sister by bossing her around and treating her as if she were beneath them.
Themes
At dinner, Dick decides that they must leave earlier than planned. He finds it hard work talking to Hosain, who is “reserved,” and Dick would rather conserve his energy for his family. The next morning, the Divers are barely awake when Mary barges into their bedroom, saying, “What is this story that you commanded my husband’s sister to clean Lanier’s tub?” Dick and Nicole are shocked; they never guessed that she was Hosain’s sister, believing instead that she was a “native servant.” Mary is furious. She had explained on the night of their arrival that the two sisters are “Himadoun”—“the wife’s ladies-in-waiting”—but Dick must have been too drunk to pay proper attention.
The fact that Mary had already explained—or warned—Dick about Hosain’s sister reveals how careless and insensitive he was when treating the sister like hired help. Hosain’s sister has an important role as Mary’s lady-in-waiting, and in failing to recognize this, the Divers have greatly disrespected her and her culture.
Themes
Mary demands that Lanier be brought in to explain this mess about the dirty bath water, which angers Nicole. Upon questioning Lanier, it becomes clear that he was mistaken about the bath water but, becoming nostalgic for old time’s sake, Mary softens her tone, asking the Divers not to leave in such a hurry. Dick is too irritated to concede, however, and insults Mary when telling her that she’s become “so damned dull.” After writing formal letters to apologize to Hosain and his sisters, the Divers leave for the train station. Mary doesn’t come down to say farewell.
It is obvious that Lanier has learned to be fearful and suspicious of foreign-looking people from his parents when it becomes clear that he made up the story about Tony’s bathwater. Dick’s excessive drinking is largely to blame for the spiteful argument he has with Mary, an old friend. His stubborn pride prevents him from apologizing to her, and the Divers leave Mary’s house, disgraced.
Themes
