Term Paper on "Scott Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night"

Term Paper 5 pages (1788 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Scott Fitzgerald

Tender Is the Night" as well as many of Fitzgerald's other works focuses on the theme of wealth and implicitly the corruption it is bringing to people's lives. Being set in Europe during the interwar period, the novel also deals with themes particular to European history and politics, such as the ascent of the capitalism on the continent and also the effect which the wealthy Americans had on Europe. Having as background the French Riviera in the late 1920's, "Tender Is the Night" is the tragic story of the young and beautiful actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish, elegant couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole to whom he practically dedicates his entire life. Her wealth urges him into a lifestyle very different from his own and whose growing influence highlights Dick's inevitable decline. In the end Dick returns home, to America where he becomes a small-town practitioner and an alcoholic.

Alcohol came to play a leading role in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life. His wife's emotional decline contributed a lot to his drinking and although he technically died of a heart attack, there is no question that his lifestyle and his abuse of alcohol played a big role in his death. Likewise, alcohol came not only to rule Dick Diver's life but also to ruin it.

The beginning of the novel places the Divers, the subjects of the novel in the center of a wonderful tanned group which seemed to " belong" on the beach in contrast to the pale" McKisko group, who represent the new class of Americans. This stylistic choice of beginning the novel viewing the world of the Divers through Rosemary's youthful eyes as a world almost close to perfection allows the reader to see Dick and Nicole as they seem rather than as they are. It is in fact Rosemary's adoring perspective which helps paste over the cracks that already existed in the couple and in Nicole's past, but in the same time Rosemary's appearance and implicitly her relationship to Dick signals the end of this happy period in the Divers' lives.

In this part of the novel Dick seems to be the soul of the party, his sociability is extraordinary and to some point contagious as he succeeds, with his excitement, to gather around him all sorts of people. The qualities that Dick exhibits in this scene are those which he will inevitable lose in the course of the novel. Showing Dick in his magnificence, in his almost perfect universe is essential for the author in order to strengthen the character's collapse in the end.

From the very beginning of the novel we can feel the attractiveness of youth. Both Nicole and Rosemary are examples of youthful beauty, not only in the freshness of their skin but also in their childish energy and naivete. These exact qualities make them appealing to Dick who maintains a complicated relationship with each of them. This interest in youth becomes an obsession for Dick and he will search it in women everywhere he goes. The theme of youth pervades even the smallest details of the novel and in the same time reflects its historical context. During the Jazz Age the American society became overwhelmed with everything that was new, youth and vitality. Ignoring the prewar history, new trends emerged with a powerful influence upon the younger generation and Fitzgerald's novel is nothing but a true product of its times.

War and battle imagery pervades many aspects of the novel and in the same time they become dominant themes in Dick's personal decline, and we can say that the symbolism of these terms is varied according to the situations in which it is used. For our character the war represents the end of an honorable era which has as representative the figure of his own father and implicitly the values instilled in his youth, like courtesy and honor.

We realize that Dick is somehow torn between the principles he was brought up with and the powerful appeal of the postwar world. In the same time his inevitable attraction towards youth and freshness is in some way symbolic of Jazz Age preoccupation with youth and gaiety. By accepting this hypothesis we practically consider Dick a victim of his times. Along with his inner struggle his moral integrity also progressively deteriorates and violence becomes central to his life. if, when he used to live by his father's moral code his life was peaceful, it becomes more obvious that his actual existence is invaded by violent episodes as the novel progresses. A very relevant example that Dick is no longer the person he used to be is the incident with the taxi driver and the fight with the Italian police. At a first glance we witness a very simple accident but in a deeper sense we understand that we are not dealing with a different person, it is the same but with a totally changed attitude whose downward spiral can no longer be stopped. His principles and his qualities are no longer there, he is driven inevitably towards the destruction of everything he once had, a successful career, a good marriage and a strong personality. This incident is important because in some way it points out what Dick has become, the exact opposite of the man who at the beginning of the novel used to lighten up everyone around him. Dick himself realizes his own decay and the fact that he must get help from Baby and Collis in order to get him out of jail proves that he has lost control and in the same time his status in the eyes of his sister-in-law.

The title of the novel is significant for Dick's evolution or better said involution and he was taken from a line of a poem, "Ode to a Nightingale "written by John Keats. The poem explores themes like transience and mortality and although at the beginning the poem abounds with imagery of youth and freshness, in the end we realize that the entire poem marks a progression towards death. Fitzgerald's choice of title speaks volumes about a dominant theme throughout the novel and that is wasted youth or promise. Dick Diver begins his career with extreme promise and potential. Having as advantages the best education and as a Rhodes Scholar, it seems that he might have become one of the most influential psychiatrist in the world. Furthermore in the society he is extremely well liked for his charm and sociability and people are drawn to him and consider themselves lucky just to be invited to join his social world. All in all he has all the potential in the world to become someone known, someone famous. In spite of all this, due to a multitude of factors and circumstances, consciously or unconsciously, he allows this potential to go to waste. In fact the entire novel is, essentially, the story of Dick's decline and wasted promise. This theme is enforced by another character, Abe North who is already an alcoholic by the time he appears in the novel.

In the face of Dick's weakness, Nicole is the one who finds her freedom and salvation. This ongoing process of curing Nicole to whom Dick dedicated his entire life ends up by ruining him. What is ironical is the fact that he is called Doctor Diver, a man that by definition must cure people ends up needing to be cured, although his illness is mostly moral. In the end of the book he rescues Mary from prison proving that he is still quite capable of acting with the extraordinary charisma which made him such a desired man at the beginning of the novel. After gaining a final and maybe the last validation of his former glory and attractiveness from Mary, Dick disappears. He moves back home, to America and becomes a rumor continuing his medical career in a small town. Consequently, Dick's greatness achievement seems to have been curing Nicole and although they go on with their lives separate from one another they will always be affected by the creative struggle that saved one of them and damned the other one.

The fact that the novel ends with the perspective of Nicole rather than following Dick serves several purposes. On the one hand it allows Dick to disappear in mystery, to dissolve himself into the unknown and on the other hand it establishes Nicole as the healthy one, whose life will go on together with Tommy.

One moral message in the novel is that living recklessly and also excessively leads inevitably to personal decline and self-destruction. The consequences of such actions extend beyond the individual and affect everyone else around it as well, such as when Abe's excessive drinking caused the imprisonment of one innocent and the death of another. Dick's excessive drinking triggered some undesired consequences as alienating his friends, his failure in… READ MORE

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