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Book 1, Chapter 3
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
The following morning, Dick Diver approaches Rosemary on the beach. He asks where she was the previous day, adding, “We worried about you.” He invites Rosemary to join him and his group for lunch. Rosemary finds him “kind and charming” and senses that he will “open up whole new worlds” and “magnificent possibilities” for her.
At last Rosemary receives the invitation she has been hoping for. It seems that Rosemary’s absence was enough to secure Dick’s interest in her. Although Rosemary is the actual celebrity, she is star-struck by Dick’s magnetism and Fitzgerald forebodes the adventures that the two will share together.
Themes
Once Rosemary has joined the group, Abe North explains affectionately that Dick and Nicole Diver were the ones responsible for “inventing” the beach resort. After they discuss the beach’s growing popularity, joking lightheartedly about the different visitors, Rosemary utilizes a quiet a moment to observe the group around her. She admires Nicole for her beauty but finds her quiet. She finds Barban—“the young man of Latin aspect”—to be restless, “uncivilized,” and “skeptical.” Abe is shy, and Rosemary distrusts his “desperate humor.” With his bright blue eyes and melodic voice, on the other hand, Dick is completely enchanting. Nicole notices Rosemary’s infatuation with him, hearing her “little sigh at the fact he was already possessed.”
Accepted into the Divers’ inner circle, Rosemary learns that the beach’s growing popularity is thanks to them. It seems that the Divers enchant people wherever they go, and Rosemary is grateful to bask in their warmth and magnetism. Nicole astutely observes, right away, that Rosemary is infatuated with Dick, which suggests that this is not the first time a young, beautiful woman has fallen in love with her husband. The reference to Tommy as “uncivilized” reflects to a long, racist, colonial legacy of associating people of color with barbarism, backwardness, and inferiority.
Themes
Rosemary’s new friends share disparaging remarks about Violet and Mr. McKisco and their party, whom they consider to be distasteful. Rosemary decides that she wouldn’t like Nicole “as an enemy.” When Dick threatens to invite the unsavory group to dinner, Nicole laughs, dismissing her husband’s suggestion immediately. Rosemary is delighted by their company, and giggles wholeheartedly when Nicole hands Dick a novelty pair of black, lace swimming trunks to wear in the sea.
Fitzgerald captures the class snobbery of the era when depicting how Nicole—who is very wealthy—considers herself superior to the McKisco’s and their friends. Although the majority of American expatriates in Europe had a great deal of wealth in the 1920s due to the economic boom, old-fashioned class divides still existed.
Themes
Dick looks at Rosemary, telling her, “you’re the only girl I’ve seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming.” Later, Rosemary cries in her mother’s arms, feeling hopelessly in love with Dick, but knowing that he’s married and that she can’t have him. When Mrs. Speers tells Rosemary that being in love ought to make her happy, she stops crying and laughs—“Her mother always had a great influence on her.”
By comparing Rosemary to a “blooming” flower, Dick refers to the fact that Rosemary is on the cusp of adulthood. She appeals to him because she is no longer quite a child, but still exudes the virginal innocence of a young girl. Indeed, Rosemary is naïve; she hardly knows how to behave without the guidance of her mother.
Themes
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