Previous
Book 1, Chapter 18
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
When Abe arrives at the train station the next morning, he has to bury his hands in his pockets to hide the trembling. His eyes are sunken, and his skin is grey; he barely resembles the man Rosemary had met on the beach two weeks before. Before he has time to buy a drink, he spots Nicole across the station: “She was frowning, thinking of her children […] merely animally counting them—a cat checking her cubs with a paw.” When she notices Abe, she scolds him for saying “unpleasant” things about his summer with her and Dick, declaring, “when you get drunk you don’t tear anything apart except yourself.”
Abe has a serious drinking problem. In the light of day, it becomes painfully apparent that his lifestyle has become entirely unsustainable, and he is forced to face the consequences of years of excessive drinking and partying. In just two weeks, Rosemary has witnessed Abe deteriorate drastically. Further, the alcohol has begun to make Abe irritable and ill-tempered, causing him to push away all of the people in his life.
Themes
Rosemary and Mary join Nicole and Abe. The three women are saddened to detect Abe’s “bitterness” and growing “will to die.” They are therefore relieved when Dick arrives to ease the tension in the group, bringing with him “a fine glowing surface on which the three women sprang like monkeys […] perching on his shoulders, on the beautiful crown of his hat.”
Suddenly, they witness a young woman running through the station. She plunges “a frantic hand” into her bag to bring out her revolver, which she uses to shoot a man on the platform. Running towards the commotion to find out what has happened, Dick ascertains that the woman is Maria Wallis—an acquaintance of the Divers’. They cannot determine the identity of the man because Maria shot through his identification card.
Through this shocking incident, Fitzgerald juxtaposes Dick’s “glowing” and calming presence from the passage before with a violence that shakes the characters to their core. The shooting punctures the calm mood that Dick brought with him and suggests that even under Dick’s careful watch, the women cannot be shielded from the horrors of the world.
Themes
Disagreeing with Dick about how to handle the situation, Nicole takes control and rushes off to phone Maria’s sister, Laura, who lives in Paris. Left alone, Rosemary and Dick feel their love for one another rushing back, and it swells between them for a brief while, until the mention of Rosemary’s mother annoys Dick. He realizes, “not without panic,” that he is losing control over their affair—“Rosemary had her hand on the lever more authoritatively than he.”
Here, Dick is undermined by his wife, who ignores his advice and uses her initiative to handle the horrible situation herself. He also realizes, just moments later, that Rosemary has more control over their relationship than he had previously acknowledged. Maria’s shooting incident, then, marks a turning point in Dick’s narrative and the beginning of his eventual downfall as his life spins out of control around him.
Themes
Get the entire Tender Is the Night LitChart as a printable PDF.
Discussing the shocking scene they’ve just witnessed once Nicole returns, Dick asks, “will any of us ever see a train pulling out without hearing a few shots?” Rosemary and Nicole are “horrified” by the whole affair and wish, somewhat unconsciously, for Dick to tell them how to feel. The shots had shaken them all, and “echoes of violence followed them out” of the station. In French, two porters discuss what just happened, noting that the revolver was small but powerful, and that the victim’s shirt was bloody as if he had been in a war.
With the reference to war, Fitzgerald evokes the horrors of World War I, highlighting how the post-war generation were never really able to escape the trauma of violence and loss. Nicole predicts that they will all suffer from a sort of PTSD as a result of the shots, just like soldiers on the battlefield.
Themes
