Key themes
- The collapse of the golden couple and what it reveals
- Mental illness and the limits of wealth as cure
- The American in Europe — romanticism and its bankruptcy
About this book
A psychiatrist, Dick Diver, treats and eventually marries a wealthy patient, Nicole. Eventually, this marriage destroys him.
Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night drew heavily on Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda, who was being treated for schizophrenia while he was writing it. He revised its structure shortly before his death in 1940.
Discussion questions
- The novel's structure was revised by Fitzgerald — the original has a different chronology from the revision. Why might this matter — does knowing the story from beginning to end change what we feel about the characters?
- Dick Diver is a brilliant psychiatrist who gradually disintegrates. At what point in the novel did you feel this disintegration become inevitable — and is it Nicole who causes it, or something in Dick himself?
- Nicole is both Dick's patient and his wife. How does Fitzgerald show the impossibility of both roles being sustained — and who is the primary victim of their marriage?
- The Riviera milieu — glamorous, corrupt, rootless — is as much a protagonist as any character. What does this world represent, and what does Fitzgerald say through its beauty and emptiness?
- Tender Is the Night was poorly received on publication and Fitzgerald died believing it a failure. It is now often rated above Gatsby. What do you think accounts for the revaluation?
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