Tender Is the Night: Personification 1 key example

The trains are described as if they are people, with American trains "absorbed in an intense destiny of their own" and "scornful of people on another world less swift and breathless." Meanwhile, European trains are "part of the country through which [they] passed." The personification of the French train is a creative description of the setting—which is new for Rosemary—by Fitzgerald. Moreover, the personification juxtaposes the two trains, and thus Americans and Europeans, against one another.

The American train is concerned with its own "intense destiny," not unlike America itself. Considering that Tender is the Night indicts the excess of the Roaring Twenties and the notion of the American Dream, the personification of the train evidences and furthers both conceptions of America. The European train, meanwhile, is one with its environment, stirring the palm trees and mixing in with its surroundings. This more gentle portrayal is seemingly more positive, but in a novel that frames Europe as a place of idle luxury, it is far from a rousing endorsement of the continent. Early on in the novel, America and Europe are juxtaposed against one another in a way that negatively portrays both: one is self-obsessed and scornful, the other lazily intertwined with the landscape.