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Book 1, Chapter 24
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
Rosemary and Dick embrace before she makes an impressive exit, leaving him alone. Back in her room, she goes directly to her desk to put her watch back on, when she realizes suddenly that “she was not alone in the room.” With horror she sees “that a dead Negro was stretched upon her bed.”
Rosemary is alone when she sees Peterson dead on her hotel bed. The fact that Peterson remains unnamed, and defined solely by his race, emphasizes the racism present in the novel. It is not clear how Peterson died, but the reader is left to assume that he was murdered by one of the men implicated in Abe’s “race riot.”
Themes
Rosemary hurries to find Dick and they run together into her room. Dick discovers that Peterson has no pulse, and that his dead body is bleeding onto Rosemary’s bed sheets. Acting fast and taking control of the situation, Dick orders Rosemary to fetch clean bed linen from his bedroom. He also tells her not to be upset—“it’s only some nigger scrap.”
Hearing Nicole calling, and wanting to protect Rosemary’s reputation, Dick leaves Peterson’s lifeless body in a plausible position in the corridor. Dick rings reception to inform the hotel that he’s come across “a dead Negro” in the corridor and that he wants his name kept out of it.
Dick acts quickly and calmly, thinking only of Rosemary and of protecting her reputation. He lies to the reception staff, concealing important information about the incident. He discards Peterson’s body in the corridor, reflecting how black lives were considered disposable in this era.
Themes
Rosemary adores Dick for protecting her and she listens “in wild worship to his strong, sure, polite voice making it all right.” Just then, however, her adoring thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Nicole’s cries from the bathroom. Thinking that she might have fallen in the bath, Rosemary follows Dick towards “the verbal inhumanity.” Dick blocks Rosemary’s view so that she can’t see his wife, and orders Nicole—“Control yourself!”—three times. Nicole, who is overcome in a fit of madness, screams her disjointed thoughts at Dick, saying finally, “I never expected you to love me […] only don’t come in the bathroom […] dragging spreads with red blood on them and asking me to fix them.”
The sight of the red, bloody sheets trigger Nicole to relapse into a fit of mental ill health. Rosemary witnesses glimpses of Nicole’s sudden and shocking breakdown while Dick tries to protect both Nicole and Rosemary. It is possible that Nicole interpreted the bloody bed sheets as evidence of Rosemary’s loss of virginity with Dick, which is why she refers to the fact that Dick doesn’t love her.
Themes
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Rosemary is completely shaken, realizing what Violet McKisco must have seen in Dick and Nicole’s villa on the Riviera. Rosemary is glad, therefore, when Collis Clay calls her. She invites him up because she’s too “afraid to go into her room alone.”
Rosemary, and the reader, finally realize what happened during the Divers’ dinner party—Violet had walked in and witnessed Nicole in a fit of distress and madness. After this incident, Rosemary makes a deliberate attempt to distance herself from the Divers.
Themes
