Overview: Tender is the Night

by Scott Fitzgerald

Tender is the Night

by Katy Z. 

Thematic Statement:

The plot of Tender is the Night revolves around two major themes- the distortion of between relationships and the destruction of jealousy. Many discreet ideas allude to the unhealthy relationships between the characters in the novel. As Nicole Diver and her father Warren shared an incestuous relationship, Justina Bieber in our GC lives in a fantasy-like, borderline-obsessive world with her father, Justin Bieber. Just like how Dick eventually succumbed to his own faults, Emily, who’s supposedly Brittany’s best friend, secretly plans ways to destroy Brittany’s image because she’s jealous of her and ends up destroying herself as well.

Summary:

Tender is the Night takes place on the French Riviera and Switzerland in the early 1900s. Rosemary Hoyt is a young actress who meets Dick Diver and falls in love with him on the same day. Dick and Nicole Diver are seemingly the perfect, glamorous couple but underneath it all, they possess many problems. Rosemary and Dick engage in an affair and the end of Book 1 ends with the turning point in the Divers’ lives; their lives go completely downhill from there. Book 2 starts explaining how Nicole and Dick met at a mental facility in Switzerland. Dick is Nicole’s guidance counselor due to her traumatic, incestuous relationship with her father. They get married and the story returns to the present time. Dick begins to unravel and his world slowly collapses. Nicole divorces him to have an affair with one of their mutual friends. The novel ends with Dick leaving to America but never actually settling down again.