Tender is the night is a novel written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald in 1934 and it was his last completed novel. The story is about human degeneration and the decay of love and marriage due to excesses of different kinds and mental disorders. The novel tells us about a young beautiful actress, Rosemary Hoyt, arriving at a Hotel on the French Riviera with her mother for a vacation. There, Rosemary meets Dick Diver, a handsome psychiatrist, and his pretty wife, Nicole Diver. This young couple leads an attractive way of life full of parties and interesting people. Rosemary becomes part of this world and she immediately falls in love with Dick, who shows the same feelings for her. When they are able to consummate their love everything starts changing. Dick becomes an alcoholic and he is accused of having an affair with a young patient. With this questionable behaviour Dick risks his marriage, which seems to be perfect, his friends and the most meaningful thing in his life: his job.
It is believed that Fitzgerald wrote this magnificent work of art during the most complex and tender period of his life, for the marriage of the Divers mirrors his own. (Lazyan, M., 2008: 5)
Tender is the night deals with many different themes such as Acting, Perversion and Paternity, but this essay is focused on Excess and Destruction, the most interesting one for it has a close connection with the Jazz Age or the Great Depression that the country was going through at the time the novel was written. This age was a time of excesses for the American people as it followed the World War II. In order to soften the suffering and misery that the war leaves in a country, the Americans found the way of doing it. They made emphasis on the quest for pleasure and enjoyment, but this way of life brought serious consequences to them and these negative results are clearly seen on the characters of the novel. They lead a life full of excesses such as heavy drinking or the pursue of beauty and youth that not only bring them to personal destruction but also their behaviours affect the people around them and in most of the cases the people they love. (Lazyan, M., 2008:2)
“It’s Rosemary I’m thinking of. She’s a natural alcoholic – keeps a bottle of gin in the bathroom and all that – her mother told me.
“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle”- F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in 1934, Tender is the Night is a novel about wealth and prosperity and the breakdown of love and marriage. Fitzgerald uses foreshadowing, symbolism, imagery and tone to emphasize that human frailty leads to downfall.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” utilize character responsibilities to create a sinister plot. For Hawthorne, protagonist Young Goodman Brown must leave his wife at home while he partakes in a night journey. For Poe, ancillary Fortunato covets a pretentious manner towards his wine tasting skills, and after being ‘challenged’ decides to prove his expertise by sampling Amontillado. Hawthorne and Poe showcase a theme of darkness but differ in their approach to the setting, characters, and fate of entrapment.
Dick Diver's love for his wife, Nicole, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, is based purely on his need to assert control and act as care taker to her due to her illness. He assumes this role in order to feel validation for his own lack of achievement in his professional life. The only true success he can be credited is Nicole's 'cure,' achieved through his devotion and care; thus he continually tries to replicate this previous success in his relationships to other young girls. He looks to be a source of caring and stability just as he had been for Nicole, relying on him for caring and protection from her illness.
Beryl Markham’s West with the Night is a collection of anecdotes surrounding her early life growing up as a white girl in British imperialist Africa, leading up to and through her flight across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West, which made her the first woman to do so successfully. Throughout this memoir, Markham exhibits an ache for discovery, travel, and challenge. She never stays in one place for very long and cannot bear the boredom of a stagnant lifestyle. One of the most iconic statements that Beryl Markham makes in West with the Night is:
The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.
'Tender Mercies,'; written by Horton Foote, is a screenplay, which presents to the reader ordinary people, who are trying to live decently in an unpredictable and violent world. The reader comes to be aware of many dramatic scenes where the central characters have come to experience many complex but yet fascinating situations in their lives. Reading this screenplay the reader will come to acknowledge one of the centralized themes in 'Tender Mercies,'; which is the theme of redemption. For those who are unaware of the word, redemption as it applies to the screenplay 'Tender Mercies'; is the literary word meaning to be saved or saving someone from an experience or a situation. The reader can observe this redemption at various times through many characters, such as: Mac, Rosa Lee, Sunny, and Dixie. Each one of these characters has been redeemed by other characters or has been the redeemer of other characters. Thus, in the paragraphs to proceed, the reader will be introduced to these exact characters and to the situations from which these characters were redeemed from or whom they had redeemed. Alongside, the reader will also come to recognize how this theme provides the clearest reason why 'Tender Mercies'; is neither a Tragedy nor Pathos.
...d not passed was to overbearing for her. Her husband Brently was alive and although, Mrs. Mallard was free so was he. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, provides more than an unhappy marriage, it delivers her ideas on marriage, love and a woman independence from a structure of male dominance. Many would still describe Mrs. Mallard as a selfish, lonely, and sympatric wife, again, there is a disconnect between the outer world and her introverted self. Some of her emotions are described as monstrous; she is
Fitzgerald's book at first overwhelms the reader with poetic descriptions of human feelings, of landscapes, buildings and colors. Everything seems to have a symbolic meaning, but it seems to be so strong that no one really tries to look what's happening behind those beautiful words. If you dig deeper you will discover that hidden beneath those near-lyrics are blatancies, at best.
McMahon, Thomas. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Authors & Artists for Young Adults. Michigan: Gale Research, 1998. N. pag. Print.
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the water of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight. (Fitzgerald 39)
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
Rosemary had her first drink with the Divers and the Norths. She did this because she thought it would somehow bring her closer to the group. She...
In every story, past or present, fantasy or reality, there is the good and there is the bad. These “forces” are expressed through antagonists and protagonists. More often than not, these antagonists and protagonists collide. In the well-known novel, A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, there are quite a few antagonists. One that is prominently presented to the readers is society as a whole. The author wrote, “After all the Titanic was considered unsinkable” (Lord 64). As expressed in the quotation, the infamous vessel, the Titanic, was essentially known for its “unsinkable” reputation. But, it is simply impossible for a ship to be unsinkable. People are gullible. The human race, in its entirety, can be told something absurd hundreds of times,
Social class is a major theme in the book The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is saying that there are dysfunctional families in every social class, though people only think of it in the lower class. Toni Morrison was also stating that people also use social class to separate themselves from others and apart from race; social class is one thing Pauline and Geraldine admire.Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda are affected by not only their own social status, but others social status too - for example Geraldine and Maureen Peal. Characters in the book use their social class as another reason for being ugly. Readers are reminded of the theme every time a new character enters into the book.
A Farewell To Arms written by Ernest Hemingway illustrates a typical love story between two people, this love story plays out in a war torn Italy during world war I, where Italy was battling Austria, the novels main characters, lieutenant Fredrick Henry an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army and Catherine Barkley an English volunteer nurse who served in Italy. The novel portrays Henry as a drunk who traveled from one house of prostitution to the next, he was not happy with his lifestyle. Henry feels detached from life and is on a quest for identification, he gives a particular insight about how he feels about women “clear, cold and dry”. Henry loved to play the role of a womanizer. He is isolated from his family and compatriots. He is an American fighting a war in another country. In my opinion Henry is emotionally exhausted and it appears he has no place to go. Henry meets Catherine Barkley, near the front between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Catherine suffered during this war before she met Henry. Catherine had lost her fiancé during this war. She was startled by rain in her nightmares. She perceived rain as death. At first Henry wanted to seduce the nurse, to him it was a game, he had told the nurse that he loved her, but she had caught on to his game. Catherine confronted Henry and told him what she thought of his game. He was severely wounded on one of his runs. Henry was sent to the American hospital where Catherine worked. That is where he actually began to fall in love with her. He fully recovered and returned to the war-front, during a retreat the Italians started to fall apart. Henry shot an engineer sergeant under his command for dereliction, later in the confusion Henry is arrested by the battle police for the crime of not being Italian. He is disgusted with the army and facing death at the hands of the battle police during questioning. Henry decided he has had enough of the war, he ran into the river to escape. After swimming to safety, Henry boards a train to reunite with his love Catherine whom is pregnant with his child. Here is where he meets with an Italian bartender who will help him escape to Switzerland by boat. Henry and Catherine plan to get married soon after the baby is born.