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Book 1, Chapter 17
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 is known for throwing lavish parties, and tonight is no different. As the group romps around Paris, surrounded by an atmosphere of excitement, others join them “as if by magic.” Somehow, Dick has managed to borrow the Shah of Persia’s splendid car, and they take it in turns to drive it around the city.
Fitzgerald presents how the financial boom in the U.S. made Americans abroad extremely wealthy and enabled them to have decadent and hedonistic lifestyles in Europe during the inter-war period.
Themes
Even amid the chaos and excitement, Rosemary never stops thinking of Dick. The “enthusiasm, the selflessness behind the whole performance ravished her,” and leads her to conclude that no other man quite compared to Dick. Dancing together, she felt the happiest she had ever been as “she felt her beauty sparkling bright against his tall, strong form.”
Rosemary is swept up in the atmosphere of freedom, hedonism, and reckless abandon. Rather than interpreting Dick’s wild party as wasteful or indulgent, however, she is completely spellbound by the excitement that follows him around.
Themes
Much later that night, Dick asks Rosemary to leave with him and Nicole, but she refuses “almost defiantly,” explaining that she must help Mary get Abe to bed—he has to catch his boat train for America that morning. As the sun comes up, the last of the party still standing find themselves in a market wagon full of carrots. Rosemary is pleased to have experienced a “wild party,” but feels that it’s not as fun without Dick.
Rosemary, probably drunk, decides not to obey Dick and go home with him and Nicole. She is becoming independent and finding her own voice in these new surroundings. She can’t help but long for Dick, however, as they travel back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning.
Themes
