The novel opens with a description of "large, proud, rose-colored" Gausse's Hotel on the French Riviera. It has only recently become a coveted resort of the "notable and fashionable people" (p. 3). The hotel's sprawling beach is mostly quiet until 10 a.m., when visitors and sunbathers arrive. Rosemary Hoyt (a beautiful eighteen-year-old American actress known for her role in the film Daddy's Girl) arrives with her twice-widowed mother, Mrs. Speers, on a June morning in 1925. The two women are disappointed by the hotel and decide to stay only three days.

Rosemary ventures onto the crowded beach and enters the water. As she swims away from shore, she notices Luis Campion staring at her. When she returns to shore from her swim out to the raft, he warns her of the sharks that lurk just beyond the raft.

Rosemary spreads her peignoir and lays down between two groups of people, one of which is white-skinned and seemingly American (the McKiscos). She surveys her surroundings, noticing a young woman, Nicole, sitting under umbrellas and writing a list, uninvolved in the conversations around her. Campion introduces himself and indicates a lady who, having seen Rosemary in Sorrento the previous week, wants to meet her. Rosemary is introduced to Mrs. Abrams, Mr. and Mrs. McKisco, and Mr. Dumphry. They identify Rosemary as a "perfrectly marvelous" (p. 7) American actress.

Mrs. McKisco explains to Rosemary that the group of beachgoers believed that she was "in the plot" (p. 7). Rosemary, uncomfortable with the conversation, wishes that her mother were there to tactfully extricate them from the situation. Rosemary joins the McKiscos for a swim in the Mediterranean. The three swim to a raft where Abe North, looking sad, helps Mrs. McKisco onto the raft before swimming away to surprise one of the children of the woman wearing the pearls.

The McKiscos agree that Abe is a "rotten Musician" (p. 9). Mrs. McKisco then brags that her husband wrote the first criticism of James Joyce's Ulysses to appear in the United States and that the couple met all of the greatest French writers and artists in Paris. She also announces that Mr. McKisco is completing his first novel, which will expand upon Joyce's idea by writing a story that takes place over one hundred years (instead of the single-day narrative that Ulysses employs). Mr. McKisco is annoyed; he wants the idea to remain private until the book is published.

Rosemary returns to shore and covers herself with her peignoir. She notices Dick Diver distributing glasses and a bottle when Campion passes and Rosemary feigns sleep. She actually drifts off to sleep until Dick wakes her, warns her about getting too burnt right away, and leaves carrying the rest of his beach equipment. Mesmerized by his eyes, Rosemary walks back to the hotel at half past one.

In the dining hall, Rosemary tells her mother, who is her best friend, that she fell in love twice on the beach: once with a group of people "who looked nice" (p. 12) and once with a married man with reddish hair (Dick Diver). Mrs. Speers encourages Rosemary, recognizing that despite being simple and sheltered, Rosemary is a great idealist and deserves every opportunity. Mrs. Speers is patient with her daughter's egotism and urges her to seek greater independence by visiting Earl Brady unaccompanied. Rosemary protests, wanting her mother's company.

After lunch, Rosemary and Mrs. Speers become bored and restless in the afternoon quiet. Rosemary rides a bus to the train station and gets off at Cannes. She notices Nicole Diver exiting a drug store with coconut oil. Rosemary misses American life.

The next day, Rosemary's shoulders are still too burnt to go to the beach, so she and her mother drive to the Riviera and back. In the evening, Rosemary can hear a lively dance going on behind the hotel. She hopes to see the Divers the next day and vows not to spend the last two mornings with the McKiscos.

On the beach the next day, Dick and Abe approach Rosemary and ask her to join their group. Dick seems charming and full of promise, and the whole group welcomes her courteously. Nicole (who, Rosemary notes, is exceptionally beautiful) looks up from the recipe she is reading to ask how long Rosemary will be at Gausse's. Rosemary, now considering staying another week, provides only a vague answer. Abe North and the Divers explain that the Divers were responsible for Gausse's being made a hotel during the summer and that the Divers are staying in a house that they bought at Tarmes.

From their luxurious spread of beach accessories, it is apparent to Rosemary that these people are very wealthy and fashionable, but they still strike her as purposeful, and though she is mainly concerned with their attitudes toward her, she still perceives their "web of some pleasant interrelation" (p. 19). These three men are all more personable and delicate than the male actors and directors she knows, moreso than the college boys she met at Yale. Dick Diver seems a complete man to Rosemary, and Nicole notices the infatuation.

The McKiscos arrive with Mrs. Abrams, Mr. Dumphry, and Campion at noon and set up, throwing side glances at the Divers. Mary North arrives, and she and Nicole poke fun at the McKiscos. Nicole also demeans British beachgoers, and Rosemary notes that she would not want Nicole for an enemy. Nicole recounts a ludicrous fight between the McKiscos a few days before and protests when Dick decides to invite them to dinner. As the party prepares to swim, Dick puts on the garment that Nicole was sewing: seemingly transparent black lace drawers that are actually lined with flesh-colored cloth. Mr. McKisco, watching, calls this a "pansy's trick" (p. 21), but Rosemary is delighted. She naively admires the expensive simplicity of the Divers and is entirely unaware of the bargains and struggles that have brought them here. Dick tells her that she looks like "something blooming" (p. 22). Later, Rosemary cries in her mother's lap, professing that she loves Dick and that the situation is hopeless.

Analysis

The opening chapters immediately establish the theme of youth and childhood. The middle-aged Dick Diver is unquestionably attracted to youthful beauty, and the description of Rosemary upon her arrival at Gausse's hotel portrays her as being still very much in a state of physical and emotional girlhood despite her Hollywood glamor. She has "magic in her pink palms" and flushed cheeks "like the thrilling flush of children after their cold baths in the evening" (p. 3). "Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood," and "the dew was still on her" (p. 4). Rosemary is a wellspring of youth, a bursting bud of human potential. To look at her, one sees a future that has not yet unraveled and which promises all of the success of radiant beauty.

In addition, Rosemary does not only look like a child, but she also behaves like one. Rosemary's mother, Mrs. Speers, recognizes that her daughter is naïve and simple. She does not want to make any decisions or go on any excursions without her mother at her side. When she wants to escape the conversation with the McKiscos, she longs for her mother, who would be able to handle the situation gracefully. She depends on Mrs. Speers, revealing the childishness that lingers behind her tender eighteen years.

Because the novel does not proceed in chronological order (the middle section shows a flashback to the beginning of the Divers' relationship), we are cleverly introduced to the novel's leading characters in much the same way that Rosemary is. We see the McKiscos and the Divers through fresh, unknowing eyes, as well as through Rosemary's biased lens. We trace the characters in the opening chapters by certain characteristic objects or behaviors (such as Luis Campion's monocle, Dick Diver's jockey cap, and Nicole's pearls), and an immediate distinction is drawn between the world of the Divers and the world of the McKiscos before we are truly introduced to the characters. Rosemary is attracted to the tanned skin and apparent gaiety of the Divers and their friends. She is not as impressed with the McKiscos, whose skin is pale and who intrusively connive to meet Rosemary. We meet the characters as Rosemary does, without knowledge of or bias regarding their histories, and we are thus inducted into the patterns of apparent class distinction and petty judgment that pervade the novel.

The opening chapters also subtly hint at the theme of abnormal sexuality that afflicts many characters. Rosemary feels uncomfortable with the effeminate Mr. Dumphry and Luis Campion, and she avoids speaking to them. Fitzgerald insinuates that the two men are romantically involved and that their relationship is somewhat discomforting. The scene where Dick emerges from a dressing tent wearing flesh-colored black lace trousers that appear to be transparent (either made or mended by Nicole) is also unsettling. He causes a commotion, and the item requires "close inspection" (p. 21) to reveal that Dick is not, in fact, exposing himself on the beach. Though Rosemary is delighted at the "expensive simplicity of the Divers" (p. 21), Mr. McKisco calls this a "pansy's trick" (p. 21) before turning and apologizing to Campion and Dumphry, thereby implicitly characterizing Dick as a homosexual. Regardless of any attributions of sexual preferences, this performance is unexpected and incongruous, leaving the reader feeling that there is something troubling about sexuality (Dick's as well as others') in the novel.

Mr. McKisco's analysis of Ulysses emphasizes the importance of odyssey, traveling far from home and encountering challenges on the way back. It also gives Fitzgerald a chance to pay homage to Joyce, even as it marks Joyce's work as expressive of something already in the past. More than ten years after Ulysses, Fitzgerald is now on to something new in Tender is the Night.

Sulking, Rosemary goes to Monte Carlo to meet with Earl Brady, who is shooting a film. She feels attracted to him when she realizes that he desires her. She suggests that he come back to Hollywood with her, but he refuses and tells her to stay until after the shot that he is filming--he will show her around the studio. But not wanting to confront his desire, Rosemary leaves.

Following lunch, Nicole goes for a walk through her garden at Villa Diana, the Divers' massive house in Tarmes. She waits silently as Dick crosses the path ahead of her, heading toward his workhouse, and then goes to a ledge to stare down at the Mediterranean Sea. Dick sees her and raises his megaphone to call out that he invited Mrs. Abrams for dinner (to Nicole's dismay) and that he intends to "give a really bad party" (p. 27). Nicole reflects on his characteristic ability to sweep everyone up into his own excitement and generate their love for them before he slips into melancholy, recognizing the "waste and extravagance involved" (p. 27). He is considerate, polite, and winning, and people feel important when he allows them to be part of his special world. But he is quick to retreat at the first indication of their waning loyalty.

That evening, Dick expresses a certain paternal interest in Rosemary as he talks with her and Mrs. Speers. When Earl Brady arrives, Rosemary is jolted by an electric attraction to him, but she feels that he is "faintly gross" (p. 29) and ill-bred in comparison to Dick.

After a half hour at the table, the mood of the guests has changed; everyone has relinquished all anxieties and suspicions. McKisco, who is intoxicated, remains the unassimilated guest. He tries to spark conversation but fails. Rosemary takes note of the guests, noting in particular her mother's perfection and Nicole's unique and silent beauty. The Divers, briefly, seem to flow with friendliness and affection. Rosemary has the sense that everyone is undeniably unified. This moment vanishes before any of them has completely noticed its existence.

The party disperses to the garden, and suddenly Dick and Nicole have disappeared. Rosemary declines Earl Brady's offer to walk down to the sea, deciding to wait for Dick's return. McKisco, a socialist, argues with Tommy Barban, who is bloodthirsty and willing to fight the Soviets. Mrs. McKisco runs back excitedly along the path, explaining that she "came upon a scene" upstairs--but Tommy quickly and cryptically interrupts that "it's inadvisable to comment on what goes on in this house" (p. 36).

Just as Rosemary had anticipated, Dick speaks with her alone on the terrace. He invites Rosemary to join him and Nicole on their trip to Paris to see Abe off to America. Rosemary reiterates her love, and Dick is torn between the impulse to retreat from her and the fear of losing her. After a moment of near-intimacy, they return to the others on the terrace.

When the party ends and the Divers issue their farewells, the moment seems very poignant to Rosemary. She wonders what Mrs. McKisco saw in the house.

Earl Brady and the Divers' chauffeur drive the guests to their respective destinations. Rosemary (in Earl Brady's car) dozes for three hours before awakening and fantasizing about kissing Dick. In the hotel bed, she is unable to sleep for the first time in her life. She tries to think through the situation as her mother would. Mrs. Speers raised Rosemary with a strong work ethic, and because Rosemary is financially independent, her mother encourages her to pursue the romance with Dick Diver, knowing that she cannot be ruined by it.

At dawn, she still cannot sleep. She walks along the terrace and sees Luis Campion weeping. He declines her offer to help, explaining that she is too young to understand the tribulations of love. He has had some sort of love quarrel with Royal Dumphry. Campion then excitedly explains that there will be a duel in an hour.

Abe North arrives, drunk. He recounts the build-up to the duel. Mrs. McKisco was trying to tell Mrs. Abrams about the disturbing scene she had encountered upstairs in the Divers' home, but the warmongering Tommy Barban, who is "a watch-dog about the Divers" (p. 43), tried to silence her, so the two of them quarreled. Tommy threatened to throw the McKiscos out of the car. Mr. McKisco, in an attempt to demonstrate his courage, suggested a duel, not imagining that Tommy would accept.

Abe explains that the Divers must not know that they were the cause of the duel. Rosemary and Abe go to see Mr. McKisco, who is sitting on his bed and has apparently been drinking all night and writing a letter to his wife. With tears in his eyes, he speaks as though he is already defeated, feeling guilty about leaving his wife without a way of returning to America and regretting that he never finished his novel. Abe hands Mr. McKisco one of Tommy's dueling pistols, which he borrowed so that Mr. McKisco could get used to them. Before leaving, Mr. McKisco asks to speak to Abe alone; Rosemary leaves.

Analysis

Nicole's youth and beauty are highlighted by her association with the garden. She walks into "an area so green and cool that the leaves and petals [are] curled with tender damp" (p. 25), and when Mrs. Speers comments on the garden, Dick is quick to explain that it is "Nicole's garden" and she "won't let it alone" (p. 28). This is Nicole's private environment, one of the spaces in the book that best represents her, and it reveals not only vitality and a capacity for regrowth, but also a sense of solitude. She walks her garden alone, pausing to listen detachedly to her children fighting and, again, to avoid Dick as he walks to his workhouse. There is a certain distance between the Divers that is hinted at in these early chapters, though it is not explained. There seems to be a wall of silence that they have nurtured.

This distance is further expressed when Dick calls to Nicole through a megaphone. This medium of conversation would suggest that there is quite a distance between the two. Still, Nicole replies to him with an ease "that seemed to belittle his megaphone" (p. 27). Despite the apparent superfluity of the megaphone, Dick continues to use it. This is perhaps the first indication that he is the one who imposes distance in the relationship.

Furthermore, this is a rare scene in Book 1 in which the Divers are not viewed through Rosemary's eyes. Rosemary is in love with the Divers and their marriage (despite her jealousy), and she is endlessly admiring of Dick. This scene, however, depicted by an objective narrator, suggests that there is something vaguely pitiable about Dick. More importantly, it insinuates the complex power dynamic that exists between them. Initially, Dick seems to be powerful with his booming, amplified voice. Nicole's power is internal, however, and she is conscious of belittling her husband. Their power dynamic shifts and changes throughout the novel, and, although Nicole clearly ends up the victor, this scene serves as a suggestion that, despite the history of the Divers and of Nicole's mental illness, perhaps she is really in control, in some way, the entire time.

Understanding the historical context of Tender is the Night is crucial to understanding much of its symbolic meaning. The novel was written during the final years of the Jazz Age, a roaring period of reckless excess that in some ways resulted in a catastrophe: The Great Depression. Fitzgerald's narrative traces a parallel path from extravagence to destruction through the character of Dick Diver (as well as through that of Abe North). Dick's parties are well known for their unparalleled extravagance, and he delights in sweeping all of his guests into the excitement of the evening, into his "carnivals of affection," yet he is burdened afterward by "his own form of melancholy" when he realizes "the waste and extravagence involved" (p. 27). He sets out to throw a party "where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette" (p. 27). This is the very mood that carries Dick to his downfall. Just as America suffered the consequences of the "Roaring Twenties," so too does Dick surrender all of his resources (financial, psychological, and emotional) to his careless and turbulent lifestyle.

In the lobby, Campion asks Rosemary to attend the duel with him, and she declines, saying that her mother would not approve. Back in the room, however, Mrs. Speers tells her she should go see the duel and be available to help afterwards. She obeys her mother and gets in a hotel car with Campion, who has brought his video camera. Turning off the main road, they approach the golf course where the duel will take place. Campion and Rosemary hide in the shadows of the wood as the duelers and their seconds congregate on the course. Abe counts to three, and the two men fire.

Both shots miss, and though Barban is unsatisfied, Abe convinces him to end the duel. On the way to the car, Mr. McKisco is pleased with himself for having gone through with it, but Abe belittles the achievement because McKisco was drunk.

Later, Rosemary, the Norths, Dick Diver, and two young French musicians are at Voisins, a Paris restaurant. As they wait for Nicole, they watch the other patrons to determine whether or not they have "repose" (p. 51), deciding that Dick may be the only sober reposed man. Though they from different social classes, Nicole, Mary North, and Rosemary are all women who are "happy to exist in a man's world" and who preserve their individuality through the men and not in opposition to them (p. 53).

After lunch, Rosemary goes to a phone booth and schedules a showing of Daddy's Girl at Franco-American films later in the week. When she hangs up the phone, she can hear Dick and Nicole on the other side of a row of coats professing their love and desire and arranging a rendezvous at the hotel at 4:00. Rosemary finds this situation moving, and she thinks of it as she shops with Nicole, finding her to be the most attractive woman she has ever met with her hardness and her elusiveness. Nicole buys lavishly and talks of the past, seeming to forget her 4:00 date with Dick. She finally remembers and gets in a taxi. Rosemary begrudgingly sees her off.

Later, the whole Diver group is walking along World War I trenches. As Dick talks passionately of the war and how it marked the end of a safe world, Rosemary feels painfully and desperately in love with him. She longs to talk with her mother. Dick and Rosemary fall behind as Abe throws pebbles, pretending they are grenades. Seeing a memorial to the Newfoundland dead, Rosemary bursts into tears.

As they start back toward Amiens in the car, Dick spots a girl from Tennessee who has come to lay a memorial on her brother's grave and whom they had met on the train that morning. She is standing uncertainly by the gate, holding a wreath, while her taxi waits. The War Department gave her the wrong grave number, and Dick tells her that she should lay the wreath down on any grave without looking at the name. She does so and accepts Dick's invitation to drive back to Amiens with his group. They sit in an arcade waiting for the train and listening to an orchestra. The Tennessee girl cheers up and flirts with Dick and Abe, who humor her. Rosemary reads battlefield guidebooks on the train ride back to Paris.

Back in Paris, Nicole is too tired to go to the Decorative Art Exhibition, and Rosemary feels an oppressive weight lift in her absence. She sees Nicole as an unpredictable, "incalculable force" (p. 60). Sitting on a houseboat with Dick and the Norths, Rosemary notices that Abe is frequently drunk and that Mary is very quiet. Rosemary drinks a glass of champagne for the first time, hoping that it will somehow bring her closer to Dick, who drinks infrequently. Rosemary confesses that her eighteenth birthday was the previous day, and Dick exclaims that tomorrow night's dinner will be her celebration.

Abe teases Dick that he will have a Broadway score before Dick ever finishes his scientific treatise, and Dick admits (to Mary's surprise and dismay) that he might abandon the project altogether for another one.

In the taxi, Dick Diver reveals to Rosemary that he is a doctor of medicine (though not practicing), and Rosemary reiterates her love for him and Nicole, waiting to be kissed. At first, Dick resists, calling her "such a lovely child" (p. 63). He finally gives in, however, kissing her "breathlessly as if she were any age at all" (p. 63). He does not enjoy it, for he is "chilled by the innocence of her kiss" (p. 64).

Rosemary lures Dick into her room, though she knows he does not love her. She asks him to take her virginity. He assumes a paternal attitude as Rosemary promises that Nicole will not discover his infidelity and that she will never attempt to see Dick again afterwards. He refuses, claiming that she is too young, and he tries to comfort her as she weeps. After attempting to dismiss the entire episode, Dick leaves the room. Rosemary brushes her hair until her arms ache.

Analysis

This section of the novel dramatically juxtaposes the characters of Dick Diver and Tommy Barban . Tommy Barban reveals himself as something of a barbaric anarchist, always seeking violence and destruction. As he tells Rosemary at the Villa Diana, he is willing to fight in any war at all so long as he is treated well, and he is relentless in his determination to carry out the duel. He is a fierce and ferocious man, both in his protection of Nicole Diver and in his destructive impulses. The fact that he owns a set of dueling pistols reveals a great deal about him and his lifestyle. Instead of being relieved when no one is shot, he insists on continuing with the duel.

Dick, on the other hand, is depicted as Tommy's opposite. His manner is friendly, graceful, and affectionate. He seeks to show people a good time and to be liked by them in everything he does. Furthermore, at the restaurant, he is aptly defined by his "repose." At this point in the novel, he is truly characterized by a personality that puts people at ease. His manners are impeccable; he is the quintessential American gentleman.

The duel is also an important scene for Mr. McKisco in that it marks a major turning point for his character. Until this scene, he has been treated with a certain degree of ridicule and contempt in the narrative. He is a second-rate author whose literary ideas are only bland, unremarkable versions of great works of fiction. His wife sees him as a coward. Abe makes a point of minimizing his sense of courage and accomplishment due to the fact that he was drunk. He has been a man without much honor. This duel, however, sparks a newfound confidence in McKisco, and its effects propel him into a successful literary career.

Fitzgerald continues the theme of violence and battle by introducing the World War I memorial field. Walking along the old battlefield, Dick Diver embodies the tension between the old world that vanished after the war and the new one that has emerged in its place. One element of Dick's downfall seems to be his inability to exist in one world entirely. At the beginning of the novel, he exudes the grace, dignity, and fine manners so closely associated with the old order, yet he occasionally plunges into the liberated and fun-loving mood of postwar Europe. As Dick stands in the trenches, he serves as a link between the death of the old world and the birth of a new one. He mourns this death, complaining that "All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love" (p. 57).

Since a part of Dick's identity is still caught in the sensibilities of prewar society, this part of him conflicts tragically with the part of his identity that is obsessed with the joie de vivre of the 1920s. Indeed, his obsession with youth is one manifestation of his investment in the postwar world. Despite his lifelong commitment to hard work, honor, and scholarly sobriety, he is drawn to the freshness and gaiety of this new lifestyle. The fact that Rosemary (the novel's most potent symbol of the youth, vitality, immaturity, and vacuousness) walks beside Dick as he revisits this past is a sure indication that it is vanishing and being replaced even as he memorializes it. Even the trench itself is "neat" and "restored" (p. 58), suggesting that the old world is truly being made over by the new. Memorials, after all, are provided only for things that are dead and gone and need to be remembered.

Dick, however, is not yet entirely ready to sacrifice his claim to old-war honor for the pleasures of the new, which is one reason why he refuses Rosemary's invitation to seduce her. The immediate reasons, though, involve the age difference and the prospect of infidelity). Consistent with the "paternal interest" (p. 28) that Dick feels for Rosemary at the Villa Diana, he tells her that she is "a lovely child" (p. 63) when she tries to make him kiss her and adds that he "expects to see a gap where [she] lost some baby teeth" (p. 64). He vacillates between sexual interest in the "youth and freshness of her lips" (p. 65) and his "paternal attitude" (p. 64), eventually leaving the room without giving in. Yet this evening is crucial to Dick's downfall, for it reveals his susceptibility to the temptation. Just as his paternal instincts are corrupted by sexual interest, so is his former identity corrupted by the invasion of new-world desires. This corruption serves to contaminate and erode Dick's character over the course of the novel until he is essentially left without any certain identity.

In the morning, Rosemary receives a letter from Mrs. Speers announcing the presence of Collis Clay, the boy who took Rosemary to the Yale prom the previous year. As they shop, Rosemary admires Nicole's great beauty and feels uncharacteristically jealous. Nicole talks of her childhood winter spent in a small, dingy hotel, revealing her family's great emphasis on the benefits of wealth.

Nicole and Rosemary meet the others for lunch at the Norths' apartment, and Rosemary senses that Dick is falling in love with her. After lunch, they go to the Franco-American Films for the screening of Daddy's Girl, where they meet up with Collis Clay. Rosemary sits between Dick and Collis, rubbing shoulders with Dick in the dark. Rosemary appears on the screen, "so young and innocent" and "embodying all the immaturity of the race" (pp. 68-69).

After the film, Rosemary announces that she has arranged a screen test for Dick. He declines the offer, stating that such a thing would be inappropriate for a scientist such as himself. Nicole and the Norths decide not to attend tea, and Dick and Rosemary drop off Collis Clay at his hotel. Dick must first stop by a different house as a favor to a friend and, warning Rosemary that she will not like the people at the party, he assures her that they will only stay five minutes.

Once inside the house, Rosemary has the feeling of being on a movie set. There are two groups of guests present: the volatile Americans and English and the serious "exploiters" (p. 72). As Rosemary is speaking with one girl, she overhears three young women speaking to each other on the other side of the room about the Divers and their "entourage" (p. 73), claiming that "they give a good show" (p. 72) and expressing their dislike of Nicole and Abe North. Rosemary returns their subsequent stare with a defiant acknowledgment that she is privy to their malice. She approaches Dick, who has been speaking with the American hostess. They leave the party and, in the taxi, Dick confesses to being in love with her. They passionately kiss.

The raw innocence of their love quickly fades, and Dick reminds Rosemary that he must not hurt Nicole and that he and Nicole must remain together. Rosemary accepts this position, though she feels that the love between the Divers more closely resembles her relationship with her mother than a true romance. Dick tells her that Nicole is not very strong and that the relationship is complicated, though their love is real. They reach the hotel and kiss each other in the stairwell, parting reluctantly. Rosemary runs to her room to write a letter to her mother, whom she now does not miss.

Later, Dick throws a party full of excitement and frenzy. Comparing Dick to the others, Rosemary is certain that he is the nicest, most enthusiastic, and most selfless, giving a piece of himself to everybody. They dance and cling to each other. Abe North pretends to be General Pershing, tricking the waiters into setting a table for him. Mary North insists to Rosemary that she simply must get Abe home so that he will make his 11:00 train, and Rosemary promises to help convince him. Dick approaches Rosemary to invite her to leave with him and Nicole and, when she explains that she must stay to help with Abe, he tells her that she "can't do anything about people" (p. 78). Riding back in a carrot wagon with Collis Clay and the Norths, Rosemary wishes she were with Dick. On the way home, Rosemary sees a horse-chestnut tree in full bloom strapped to a truck. It reminds her of "a lovely person in an undignified position yet confident none the less of being lovely" (p. 79), and she identifies with it.

Later, Abe stands under a glass dome in the Paris train station waiting for Nicole, where he asked her to meet him. When she arrives, Abe tells he that he is tired of both of the Divers, and she expresses her disapproval of him giving up on everything. He tells her that he got bored. They sit in silence. Abe has been in love with Nicole. She reprimands him for being an alcoholic, claiming that it tears him apart. He is dangerously and undeniably addicted.

When Rosemary, Mary North, and Dick arrive, Abe boards the train. Suddenly, Nicole directs Dick's attention to a scene on the platform. A girl Nicole knows runs away from the man to whom she is talking, pulls a revolver from her purse, and shoots him. The train stops, and Dick runs to the scene to offer assistance. Minutes later, the man is brought away on a stretcher, while the girl is taken off by gendarmes.

Dick announces that Maria Wallis shot an Englishman through his identification card. Dick, who also knows Maria, starts off toward the police office to assist and protect Maria, but Nicole insists on calling Laura Wallis first. Though they leave the station behaving as though nothing had happened, they all feel the effects of the afternoon. With Abe's departure, Mary's imminent departure, and "echoes of violence" (p. 85), they feel vaguely unhappy.

Dick Diver feels "profoundly unhappy" (p. 86) during luncheon at the Luxembourg Gardens. First Mary North leaves and then Rosemary does, asking them to leave a message with Collis Clay to call her the following day. As Dick and Nicole sit in silence, he notices a "flash of unhappiness on her mouth" (p. 87) and wonders what she thinks of his relationship with Rosemary.

Nicole leaves when Collis arrives, leaving the two men to talk. Collis recounts an incident between Rosemary and Bill Hillis, a boy from Yale. On a train from New York to Chicago, they were caught by the conductor in Collis's compartment with the door locked and the blinds down. Dick feels despairingly jealous, and he is plagued by the relentless idea of the boy asking Rosemary if he can pull down the curtain and her acquiescing.

Dick picks up his mail, unhappily presents a check to Casasus to authorize, leaves the bank, and goes to the Par Excellence Studio to meet Rosemary. He waits for her outside, knowing that this marks "a turning point in his life" (p. 91).

Analysis

Incest is a pervasive motif in Tender is the Night. The first and only actual incidence of incest occurs between Nicole and Devereux Warren. When he brings Nicole to Dohmler's clinic, he explains how close they had become after her mother's death. He describes how "all at once [they] were lovers" (p. 129), revealing that the cause of Nicole's schizophrenia is the trauma that she suffered from her father's molestation. Though this piece of the Diver history is not disclosed until the middle of the book, it provides a lens through which to view not only Dick's relationship with Nicole, but also Dick's relationship with Rosemary.

Rosemary's youth and immaturity have been emphasized from the beginning, and the fact that she had a starring role in the movie Daddy's Girlprovides a clear and direct parallel to her relationship with Dick. Dick essentially falls in love with her at the theater, watching her play "the school girl of a year ago, hair down her back and rippling out stiffly...; there she was--so young and innocent--the product of her mother's loving care; there she was--embodying all the immaturity of the race" (p. 69). In light of the paternal interest that Dick has henceforth shown in Rosemary, his attraction to her childishness certainly evokes the incest motif. This connection is more explicitly made at the end of the film, duing "a lovely shot of Rosemary and her parent united at the last in a father complex so apparent that Dick winced for all psychologists at the vicious sentimentality" (p. 69). The implication here is that the film mirrors the incestuous relationsip that Nicole had with her own father. Dick, as the father substitute and lover of two women who have lost their fathers, develops relationships with both of them, and both have incestuous overtones.

It is not only the vibrancy and sensuality of Rosemary's youth that attracts Dick. She is also a representative of her time, in all of its reckless immaturity. As Nicole notices toward the end of the novel, the Jazz Age marked a particular obsession with youth. Because it was an era defined by its attempt to dispose of the social code and replace it with something more fresh and vibrant, American youth became symbolic of the postwar revelry. Thus began a fixation on the ways of the young. Rosemary is not only the specific object of Dick's affection for young women, but she is also the object of a culture's obsession for the fresh and the new.

The romance between Dick and Rosemary also documents (and contributes to) Dick's steady decline into a state of immaturity and ineffectiveness. They are portrayed almost as adolescents who share nothing deeper than puppy love, kissing in the stairwell and separating with fingers touching, stretching as long and far as they can. At this point, their affair is naïve and unconsummated. It also produces a devastating jealousy in Dick which also illuminates the deterioration of his maturity and reason. When Collis Clay mentions that Nicole was intimate with another boy, Dick is plagued by haunting and persistent thoughts. He imagines the boy asking Rosemary if he can pull down the shade in the train cabin, and this line creeps into Dick's consciousness incessantly throughout the rest of the novel. It becomes an abstract fixation that both causes and proves his continual decline.

This deterioration, however, does not only take place in Dick's mind, but in his entire world. Before Rosemary's arrival, days on the Riviera were calm and pleasant. With the beginning of their relationship, violence begins to erupt all around Dick. The murder committed by Maria Wallis that takes place in Paris is just one example of the way that Dick's decline is reflected in the space that he occupies.

On the other hand, perhaps the disease originates within the society, and Dick is primarily a victim of it who insensibly goes along with it. Either way, as he stands and waits outside of Rosemary's film studio, he is aware that his behavior marks "a turning point in his life," being "out of line with everything that had preceeded it" (p. 91). All of his "correctness" (p. 91) and dignity is slowly being contaminated by his desire for la joie de vivre.

Dick realizes that Rosemary must have left the studio already. He calls her at the hotel to explain that he is "in an extraordinary condition" about her and that he wants to see her. When she hangs up the phone, Rosemary returns to writing a letter to her mother about a new director that she is in love with and wants to follow to Hollywood.

Dick calls Nicole at six and asks her to have a quiet dinner and to see a play. Though Nicole harbors detectable resentment, she agrees to go. They knock on Rosemary's door before they leave, but there is no answer and they judge that she is asleep.

Later, Nicole awakens (noticing that Dick is not in his bed) to a sargent-de-ville knocking at her door. He explains that Abe North was robbed in Paris last night and a black man has been arrested for it. Some time later, the office informs Nicole that Mr. Crawshaw, a black man who claims to know the Divers, is there to see Mr. North about Mr. Freeman, the man who is in jail because "there is an injustice" and Mr. Freeman is a "friend to all the world" (p. 97). She goes out to shop with Rosemary, and when they return, Dick is there. He has had a confusing phone conversation with Abe in which it seems that Abe "launched a race riot in Montmartre" (p. 98). He is going to try to free Mr. Freeman from prison. He also mentions a black shoe-polish maker who may show up at the hotel.

Dick indulges in his growing, silent criticism of Nicole, sensing an imminent battle between them. At lunch downstairs, they sit at a table next to a group of Gold Star mothers. Dick reflects on the solemnity of the war and "the whole new world" in which he now, since Rosemary's arrival, believes.

Later, Abe North is at the Ritz Bar. He stays all day, wishing to prolong his state of irresponsibility, though he knows that he should go rescue Freeman from jail. At four in the afternoon, Jules Peterson is announced (he is forbidden from entering the bar because he is black), and Abe goes out to meet him.

Meanwhile, Dick leaves a note for Maria Wallis (signed "Dicole"), walks around town, and recalls Nicole's beauty from earlier that day, which far surpassed Rosemary's. He is frightened by his own passions. He arrives at Rosemary's door, feeling a sense of disappointment with her, and he asks her to sit on his lap and kiss him. He thinks of his responsibility to Nicole. She calls them both actors. There is a knock at the door--it is Abe, with Mr. Peterson of Stockholm. Abe confesses that Mr. Peterson is in trouble and it is Abe's fault. Mr. Peterson had been a legal witness to the theft of Abe's thousand-franc note by a black man, and the two men had falsely identified Mr. Freeman, a "prominent Negro restauranteur" (p. 106). Feeling betrayed, blacks have been after Mr. Peterson all day. Mr. Peterson leaves the room to allow them to discuss the matter. Abe leaves soon after, noting that Mr. Peterson is not in the corridor. He decides to return to the bar and ask Paul about a boat back to America.

After a brief embrace with Dick, Rosemary returns to her room to put on her wristwatch and finish the letter to her mother. Suddenly, she notices a black man lying dead on her bed, screams, and runs back for help from Dick. Dick moves Mr. Peterson's arm and notices blood on the cover. Hearing Nicole's voice in the corridor, Dick opens the door and tells her to bring the couverture and top blanket from their room, ordering her not to become upset. Dick moves the body and strips the bed, trading bundles with Nicole at the door and re-making Rosemary's bed. He infers that Mr. Freeman tracked down and murdered Mr. Peterson, and he knows that unless he does something, the situation will tarnish Rosemary's name and ruin her career as the innocent "Daddy's Girl."

Dick drags the body into the hallway and calls the hotel manager, McBeth, to say that as they were leaving the room, they found a dead body in the corridor. He insists that his name not be tied to the event. McBeth and a gendarme arrive to see the body carried off into another room.

Dick and Rosemary hear horrifying noises coming from the bathroom, where Nicole had gone. There, Nicole is kneeling beside the tub, swaying and talking nonsensically about how Dick has intruded on her only privacy in the world with his blood-stained sheets, and how she always knew he would never love her. Rosemary, realizing that this is what Mrs. McKisco had seen in the bathroom at the party, is relieved when Collis Clay calls to take her out.

Analysis

The gruesome murder of Jules Peterson is the next incidence of violence in the Divers' lives. Indeed, it almost seems as if the violence has sought them out. Their only real connection to these new violent episodes is Abe North, who was not even supposed to be in Paris anymore, but the events are somehow intimately tied to Dick's relationships with Nicole and Rosemary. Abe and Mr. Peterson arrive at Nicole's door as Dick is visiting her, and the Divers and Rosemary work as a trio in order to clear the body and preclude and conceal any knowledge of the event.

The fresh corpse is found on Rosemary's bed, where she had been sitting on Dick's lap only minutes before. Dick lifts the body to see the blood on the cover, symbolizing the affair that is smeared with gruesome disgrace and is eventually fatal. This section of the book documents not only the death of Jules Peterson, but also symbolically that of Dick's former self and of his marriage with Nicole.

This event also marks Nicole's major relapse, which counterintuitively provides the foundation for her complete recovery. It is a kind of cathartic experience. Following the removal of the dead body, Dick and Rosemary find Nicole sitting and swaying on the bathroom floor (a scene that is presumably very similar to that which Violet McKisco saw at the party). Here, as Nicole speaks incomprehensibly about wanting Dick to leave her in privacy and about how he never loved her, Rosemary finally has insight into Nicole's mental illness and the true nature of the relationship between the Divers. She has suspected that their relationship more closely resembled her own relationship with her mother (another glance at the incest-motif) than a relationship between lovers, and this scene provides the first explicit evidence that Dick's role in Nicole's life exceeds that of a husband. He is her psychiatrist, her caretaker, and, symbolically, her father.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Peterson's death also implicate Abe North's lifestyle; it is guilty and villianous. Nicole reflects aptly upon Abe's alcoholism, wondering why he has allowed this addiction to erode the healthy pathways of his life--he used to be "so nice." It was most likely his state of intoxication that made him unable to properly identify the man who stole his wallet and which, thus, indirectly caused the murder. He has become completely irresponsible and unable to cope with the demands of his life. The growing evidence for this claim includes the fact that he spends the entire day after the incident in a bar, not wanting to face its reality. Alcohol is also closely tied to Dick's downfall. For him it will lead to violence, imprisonment, and the loss of his career. The novel's point about the association between alcoholism and human decline is evident, and it expresses the larger theme of the recklessness of the gaiety of Jazz Age society.

Book 2 opens with a flashback to 1917, when Dick has first arrived in Zurich as a twenty-six-year-old doctor. His status as a valuable scholar protected him from the World War I draft. Originally from Connecticut, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1914 before returning to get his degree at Johns Hopkins University. He went to Vienna to meet Freud and wrote a pamphlet that was later published. This was the great "heroic period" (p. 116) in Dick's life. Referred to as "lucky Dick" in New Haven, he was still unaware of his unique charm. He burned textbooks to warm himself while he studied because it was difficult to find coal, assuring himself that all of the information was already inside him. In addition to being a promising scholar, he was also a great athlete.

His interactions with Ed Elkins, his roommate at Yale, made him first doubt the quality of his mind, for he felt that his and Elkins's thinking (which was devoted to football history) were remarkably similar. Dick senses that he must be somehow "less intact, even faintly destroyed" (p. 116), and that "the price of his intactness was incompleteness" (p. 117). Dick sensed that his successes were too easily obtained and that he would not fully bloom as a human and an intellectual unless he encountered misfortune and adversity. When Dick arrived in Zurich, he was under the crippling illusions of "eternal strength and health, and of the essential goodness of people" (p. 117). He was ordered to join a neurological unit in Bar-sur-Aube, France, where the work was merely executive. He completed his short textbook and returned to Zurich, discharged. The narrator reports that Dick, like general Grant, is "ready to be called to an intricate destiny" (p. 118).

Though he felt like a mere "toy-maker" (p. 118) of a doctor in Zurich, he decides to stay for another two years. He sees Franz Gregorovius, a resident pathologist at Dohmler's mental clinic (for the rich) on the Zurichsee. Franz meets him at the station, and they discuss the war on the way to the clinic. Franz explains that patients have shell-shock merely from hearing a distant air raid, and Dick feels that this is nonsense. Then Franz asks if Dick has really just come to see Nicole, with whom he has been corresponding by letter during Dick's draft. Because Nicole was a patient, Franz had read the initial letters that she sent to Dick, but, as she became well again, he essentially turned the case over to Dick.

Dick describes how, when he first met Nicole, he did not know that she was a patient. He thought her to be "the prettiest thing [he] ever saw" (p. 120). Dick begins to defend his pity for the girl, but Franz tells him how important Dick's influence has been in Nicole's recovery and wants to continue to discuss the case in his office before Dick sees her.

Alone in Franz's office, Dick recalls the fifty letters that Nicole sent him after only meeting once. The first half of the letters were "of marked pathological turn" (p. 121), but the second half were entirely normal and revealed that she was maturing. These Dick had awaited eagerly. Dick began to answer all of her letters faithfully, and Nicole sent worried letters like a lover whenever his response was delayed.

About a year and a half earlier, Franz tells Dick, an American man named Mr. Devereux Warren, who was living in Lausanne (but was originally from Chicago), had contacted Doctor Dohmler and brought his sixteen-year-old daughter, Nicole, to the clinic. Mr. Dohmler consulted privately with Mr. Warren, clearly a wealthy man much disturbed by Nicole's condition. With tears in his eyes and whiskey on his breath, Mr. Warren explained that Nicole was a happy and healthy child but, as of about ten months ago, she had been doing "crazy things" (p. 126). She accused one of the Warrens' valets of trying to seduce her, and Mr. Warren fired him before discovering that it was "all nonsense" (p. 127). She became increasingly unstable, speaking often of men trying to attack her, and Mr. Warren spared no expense to try to cure her. Dr. Dohmler sensed a hint of falsity in this story and asked to speak with Nicole.

After Mr. Warren had returned to Lausanne and Nicole had been at the clinic a few days, Dohmler and Franz diagnosed her with acute schizophrenia, noting her view of men as the main symptom. Doctor Dohmler had to persuade Mr. Warren to return for his promised second visit, catching him just as he was about to flee back to America. Within half an hour of his second visit, Mr. Warren broke down and revealed with utter regret and shame that he had molested his daughter years after Mrs. Warren died. Nicole "seemed to freeze up right away" (p. 129). Dr. Dohmler told Mr. Warren to spend the night in a Zurich hotel, come back to the clinic in the morning, and then return to Chicago.

Dohmler told Warren that he would take the case if he promised to stay away from his daughter indefinitely. They doctors mapped out a schedule, but they had little faith that Nicole would improve. Her letters to Dick provided a way to measure her improvement, and Dohmler thanked Dick for continuing the correspondence, for it gave Nicole someone else to think about. At first, she felt complicit in the crime, but when she no longer did, she began to distrust all men, especially those closest to her. The doctors did not encourage her to address the episode directly and, realizing that she had a good mind, they gave her some Freud to read. She became a doctor's pet.

Dick explains that her recent letters show a healthy hunger for life, and Dohmler warns Dick to approach her carefully so that she does not become too attached. Dick tells Dohmler that he intends to be the greatest psychologist who has ever lived, and he explains that his plans are to attend university classes for the rest of the year, go home to visit his father for a month, and then return to take a position at Gisler's Clinic. Dohmler warns him against joining this clinic.

Dick has dinner with Franz and Kaethe Gregorovius, feeling oppressed by Franz's acquiescence to a domestic life without grace or adventure. But he also realizes that he has been going through his own identity crisis of sorts, trying to decide if his sacrifices were really worth making. Though he has wanted to be good, kind, brave and wise, he also has wanted to be loved.

Dick and Nicole now sit out on the veranda and talk. Dick tells Nicole that he will be in Zurich until July, and Nicole explains that she will take a trip with her sister in June. Dick is overwhelmed by her youth, beauty, and the "childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world" (p. 134). There is loud music playing, and Nicole suggests that she and Dick take a walk to find some quiet. She takes his arm, talking about the phonographs she will play him, and Dick is confused about his feelings for her.

The next week, they sit alone on a rock and listen to the phonographs. Nicole sings to him and presents him with a smile that holds a "profound promise of herself" (p. 136). She leans against him, and he is taken with her, thinking of her as a "scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent" (p. 136).

Analysis

This flashback begins with a portrait of Dick during his early years as a medical student and aspiring doctor. We see a young man full of talent, intellect, motivation and promise, yet we also see hints of the very aspects of Dick's personality that lead to his downfall. As an Ivy League student and Rhodes Scholar, Dick proves himself a serious student. He burns textbooks in order to stay warm and study, knowing that he has already learned all of the information in them. He is driven, dedicated, and considered to have great promise in the field of medicine. This was Dick's "heroic period" (p. 116), and Dick's eventual decline is made even more tragic by its juxtaposition with this golden past, which seemed to promise an even brighter future. For this reason at least, Fitzgerald's choice to employ a flashback makes good literary sense. When Dick tells Franz that he wants to be the greatest psychiatrist that has ever lived, many seem to believe that this goal is within his reach. But readers already know how this promise is turning out.

Even at this early date, though, lurking beneath all of Dick's promise and ambition is a distinct and uneasy sense that this is not a life that he truly wants. From his interactions from Ed Elkins, his roommate at Yale, he begins to suspect that his is not a truly exceptional mind. He feels that he is somehow "less intact, even faintly destroyed" (p. 116), and that he is certainly incomplete. He feels a certain emptiness and lack of fulfillment in the role of the honorable doctor; he feels like a mere "toy-maker" (p. 118). He also has sensed an identity crisis behind his composed exterior, for although he has wanted to be good, kind, brave and wise, he also has wanted to be loved.

Thoughout the novel, this desire to be loved is Dick's strongest motivator, outweighing his desire to be successful in his other pursuits. He is charming and affable, hosting parties and being a constant entertainer. He relishes the admiring and affectionate attention of others, and this need often distracts him from his more scholarly and career-oriented pursuits.

For Dick, being a doctor necessitates that he repress his urges for the good life. In order to maintain his standard of honor, he must not fall prey to many of the earthly temptations that present themselves. For instance, in the first section of the novel, Rosemary notes that Dick barely drinks any alcohol. Yet, in this area too, even during this "heroic period," Fitzgerald portrays Dick's inner identity struggle. He is torn between the honor and integrity upheld by his father's generation and the sense that this simply is not the lifestyle for him. Dick's decline, which we have already observed, documents his slow surrender to the impulses that he so effectively suppressed as a younger man. Though Rosemary's youth and the corruption of Nicole's money will contribute to his deterioration, these chapters clearly suggest that Dick's own propensities provide a foundation for his overall trajectory.

These chapters also provide far more insight into the complicated dynamic of Dick's and Nicole's relationship. (Throughout the first chapter of the novel, the couple is viewed through Rosemary's adoring eyes, and though the reader is given subtle indications of the hardship that lies at the foundation of their marriage, it is presented as happy and mutual, on the whole. Still, the revelation that Nicole is a schizophrenic and that the first year of their relationship also served as Nicole's mental treatment makes it obvious that their love cannot possibly be pure and simple.) Dick is not only a doctor figure, but also a father figure to Nicole; he comes to replace the monstrous man who destroyed her. Through Dick's influence, she is able to move past her intense fear of all men and to trust in his distant affection.

Here we also see a precedent for Dick's semi-incestuous feelings for Rosemary. He is initially attacted to Nicole's "childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world" (p. 134). She is a "waif of disaster" whom he has adopted as his patient and almost as a daughter. Dick probably understands the consequences of falling in love with her, yet he cannot turn away from the "profound promise" (p. 136) that she offers. Thus, even as a young man, Dick is attracted to relationships that allow him to play a paternal role, and here we begin to see the many parallels between his relationship with Nicole and his relationship with Rosemary.

Dick next sees Nicole at a luncheon in Zurich in May. He knows that the logical thing to do is to stay away from her, but he is jealous when other men show interest. She is growing in confidence, and he wants to help her feel independent and secure. Dick is again established at Zurich and is working to publish his pamphlet, "A Psychology for Psychiatrists." Franz does not agree with this decision, but Dick wants to make something of his ideas and not squander them. He admits he entered this profession only because he was interested in an Oxford girl who attended the psychology classes.

Franz warns Dick that Nicole is in love with him. They go to Doctor Dohmler's office to ask for his counsel on the matter. He asserts that this "transference" must be terminated and that Nicole is in no condition to suffer a heartbreak. They speak of sending Nicole away before Dick finally admits that he is "half in love with her" (p. 140) and has considered marrying her. Franz disapprovingly exclaims that he would devote half of his life to being "doctor and nurse and all" (p. 140) and that the marriage would be doomed from the start. Dr. Dohmler agrees.

They agree that Dick must gently eliminate himself from Nicole's life. Dick walks out into the rain and finds her immediately, and they discuss the trip that she will take with her sister, Beth (whom everyone calls Baby). Dick is enchanted by her face, which seems to promise eternal youth and beauty. She leads him to a covered woodshed, and Dick encourages her to forget the past, go back to America, and fall in love. Nicole's hopes are dashed, and she becomes upset. She avoids the temptation to entice him with her money and starts back to the clinic with Dick walking beside her.

Dick decides to finish the break after supper, but Nicole sends a message down with a nurse that she would like to be excused from dinner. Dick leaves a note for Franz excusing himself and walks to the tram station. Expecting to hear from her the next day, he calls Franz and learns that she understood his intentions.

Over the following weeks, Dick feels dissatisfied and guilty about the situation. He sees Nicole with Baby in a Rolls Royce in front of the Palace hotel and walks by without speaking to her. Realizing how much he feels for her, he distracts himself with an old flame and by working harder. On a trip up in a mountain-climbing car, Nicole and a young Latin man enter the rear compartment, where Dick is sitting. Nicole greets Dick and introduces the man, the Conte de Marmora. Her hair is shorter, and Dick notices that there is no remaining trace of the clinic. They discover that they are both bound for Caux, but Dick resolves to stay at a different hotel for fear of tarnishing her new levity and happiness by reminding her of the past.

When the funicular stops, Nicole follows Dick to get his bicycle. She invites him to their hotel for dinner. She introduces him to the "formidable and vulnerable" (p. 150) Baby Warren, and Dick promises to drop in after dinner. Back at his hotel, Dick is entirely flustered by the resurgence of his feelings and by the realization of how much Nicole loves him.

Nicole, Baby, and Marmora (whose family fortune is entwined with the Warren fortune) await Dick in the hotel salon. When he arrives, Baby takes an immediate interest in him, expressing her concern about being able to distinguish between normal and crazy behavior in Nicole. Baby begins to explain her plan to have Nicole marry a doctor from the South Side of Chicago (to "buy" Nicole a doctor, according to Dick).

Baby is uneasy when she discovers that Nicole has gone off, and Dick offers to look for her. Nicole is outside overlooking the lake, and she explains that she is used to a quieter lifestyle. When Dick avoids addressing the situation between them and his feelings for her, Nicole boldly confronts him with an assertion that she has common sense and understands the dynamic between them. She suggests that, had she not been sick, Dick would have been interested in marrying her. She demands that he give her a chance and, when she kisses him suddenly, he surrenders to her. They run back to the hotel as a storm breaks, and Baby sends Dick back to his hotel to change.

The next morning, Dick returns to his room after mountain climbing to find two notes. One is from Nicole expressing how happy she is about the previous night. The other is from Baby Warren, stating that she must hurry back to Paris and requesting that Dick allow Nicole to ride with him back to the sanitarium in Zurich. Dick is furious, assuming that she intends to buy him as Nicole's doctor-husband (when, in fact, she found Dick too intellectual and stubborn). Nevertheless, the train ride together solidifies their relationship. When Dick drops her off at Zurichsee, "he knew her problem was one they had together for good now" (p. 157). Nicole objects to Dick's stated intention to marry Nicole, claiming that he is still too unfamiliar to the family. They do marry, however.

The following section of the novel presents the passage of time and the developments in Dick and Nicole's relationship through a combination of conversation bits and journal entries from Nicole's point of view. She inherits far more money from her family's estate than she needs or has expected, making it clear that Dick does not want any of her money. She loves being with Dick, but she can tell when he is emotionally distant. Nicole gets pregnant and convinces Dick to partake in the Warren money so that they can buy themselves a bigger apartment. When Topsy, their second child, is born, Nicole suffers a relapse. Nicole once again uses her money to buy them a house on the French Riviera, where they can be "brown and young together" (p. 161). Uncharacteristically, Dick registers them as Mr. (not Dr.) and Mrs. Diver.

In the final part of this section, Nicole is writing a journal entry on the beach about how she is starting to feel better (though her writing betrays that she is still unstable) and about how Tommy Barban is in love with her. It brings the reader right to the moment that begins the book, with the Divers, Abe, and Tommy on the beach and Rosemary being spotted for the first time.

Analysis

At the end of the book, when Nicole will recover and choose Tommy Barban over Dick and their marriage, she will suspect that Dick has anticipated this conclusion (and has, in fact, even planned it) from the very beginning of their relationship. There is some evidence that Dick is at least unconsciously doing so; critics sometimes argue that Fitzgerald makes us aware of the informed decisions that result in Dick's emotional and professional demise. He senses that she is a "waif of disaster" (p. 136), yet he is drawn to her, largely because of his desire to be loved. She "brings everything to his feet, gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, or worshipping myrtle" (p. 137). She offers herself to him completely and adores him entirely, and this puts strain on Dick's weak points.

In addition to Dick's desire to be loved, however, Dick continues in his active desire to help Nicole. Although he has been largely responsible for her steady improvement, he tries "honestly to divorce her from any obsession that he had stitched her together--glad to see her build up happiness and confidence apart from him" (p. 137). He is concerned with her sense of independence and autonomy, and though this concern betrays a power imbalance between the two of them (ironically, Dick regulates Nicole's sense of autonomy), it also provides insight into Dick's motivations and intentions. He wants to help Nicole, and he is very motivated by the doctorly feelings that guide his relationship.

Because of these feelings, in part, and because Franz and Dohmler forcefully warn Dick about the inevitable outcome of a marriage with Nicole, the novel suggests that Dick always knew that the marriage would come to its tragic end. When he admits to the doctors that he is "half in love with her" (p. 140) after trying to stay away from her for several weeks, Franz exclains that by being "doctor and nurse and all," he would be starting a marriage that would be "finished in the first push" (p. 140). Dohmler agrees that this would be the unavoidable conclusion, and Dick seems to understand. Yet, Dick cannot deny his feelings any longer when Nicole kisses him, and when he drops her off at the Zurichsee clinic, he knows "her problem was one they had together for good now" (p. 157). This sentence bears an ominous and foreboding tone. Indeed, Dick carries this problem in the form of his ruined existence even long after Nicole is no longer his wife.

In addition to his compulsive need to be loved, the description of Dick's growing love for Nicole again highlights his attraction to youth and the similarities between this relationship and his romance with Rosemary. He is "older enough than Nicole to take pleasure in her youthful vanities and delights" (p. 137), and he finds her face "reminiscent of the fram of a promising colt--a creature whose life did not promise to be only a projection of youth upon a grayer screen, but instead, a true growing" (p. 141). When he kisses her, he surrenders to her "young lips" (p. 155) and falls completely in love with her. His relationship with Nicole, then, sets a precedent for his future fixation on young women. He is already significantly older than Nicole, and he is attracted to her sense of youthful promise. To consider also the religious imagery associated with Nicole's love for Dick and establishing himself as a kind of divinity or priest for her (with the "gifts of sacrificial ambrosia and the worshipping myrtle"), Dick takes on a different Father role for Nicole, thereby presenting a more complicated iteration of the incest motif.

These chapters also introduce the reader to the world and the dangers of the Warren wealth. Baby Warren is entirely direct about her intention to buy a Chicago doctor-husband for Nicole, and Dick is taken aback by the inhumanity of this plan. When Baby sends him a note requesting that he take Nicole back to the clinic, Dick is furious, because he senses the force with which the Warrens wield their financial powers and use people as mere conveniences and means to various ends. Although Nicole initally avoids using her money as power (when Dick attempts to break off ties with her at Zurichsee, she fights an urge to entice him with her money), she eventually ignores Dick's stated desire not to live on her money and persuades him to use it to buy a nicer house and, eventually, the Villa Diana. From these chapters, it is clear that Dick is a victim not only of himself and his instinctive desires for adoration and youth, but also of the Warren wealth, which slowly and surely claims ownership of his life.

Dick and Mrs. Speers sit in a café talking. It is August, after the return from that turmoil-ridden trip to France. Mrs. Speers expresses regret that Nicole was disturbed by the situation and tells Dick that he is the first man Rosemary ever cared for. He tells Mrs. Speers that he is in love with her daughter, already mourning Rosemary's absence.

Back at the Villa Diana, he goes to his workroom and lays out the materials for his book, realizing that he is already out of good new ideas. He is suddenly resentful of Nicole's money and the lifestyle that it imposes on him, and he realizes that he is very doubtful of the plan that he has had for his book. He takes a drink of gin.

When he sees Nicole in the garden, he is overcome by a "leaden feeling" (p. 166), for he has been keeping up a front for her since Paris. On the train, he avoided her stare and sensed that, though she was suspicious, she was glad to have him to herself again. At lunch, he drinks almost an entire bottle of wine and they talk, but back in the compartment, Nicole begins to discuss Rosemary. Nicole compliments Rosemary's looks and talent, but Dick contradicts her in order to pretend that he does not love and admire her. Dick cannot banish his feelings for Rosemary, and he feels annoyed with Nicole for not being able to take better care of herself. He fears that her breakdown in Paris may be an indication of a new cycle of her disease.

He later goes to Nicole in the garden and tells her that he ran into Mrs. Speers and Bartholomew Tailor while he was in Cannes. Dick wants to be alone, which Nicole can discern, and she feels a confusing combination of hatred and desperate love. Dick enters the house and sits down at the piano, playing "Tea for Two and Two for Tea." He stops abruptly when he realizes that Nicole might recognize his nostalgia for the past few weeks. Dick feels uncomfortable in his own house, for it stands as a symbol of how Nicole's money has stripped him of his financial and general independence. He has felt that "his work became confused with Nicole's problems" (p. 170), and he feels that he has been living falsely and restrainedly.

In December, when Nicole and the relationship seem to have recovered, the Divers go to the Swiss Alps for the Christmas holidays. The Divers and Baby Warren (accompanied by two British men) attend a tea dance in a hall on the ski slopes in Gstaad. Nicole urges Dick to enjoy himself, and Dick avoids looking at young maidens for fear of upsetting Nicole. Baby begins to discuss investing the huge sums of money that she has gotten for selling her mother's property, but Dick leaves to retrieve Franz from the station.

Franz arrives and, at the dinner table, he tells Dick of the business plan that has brought him here. He wants to take Braun, an old clinic on the Zugersee, and manage it with Dick. Dick can tell that Baby is listening as Franz explains that Dick could spend half the year in residence and the other half writing, and that the atmosphere would be good for Nicole. Franz explains, however, that buying the clinic would cost them $220,000. Baby, who believes it will help Nicole to be near the clinic, offers to buy the clinic with Warren money. Dick is disturbed by this, realizing that the Warrens will have essentially bought his independence, and he resents Baby's "cold, rich insolence" (p. 177).

Later at the grill, Dick finds that a young woman who captivated him earlier now suddenly appears "devitalized" and "uninteresting" (p. 179). On her way to bed, Nicole admits that she likes the clinic idea and, two days later, as he accompanies Franz to the station, Dick concedes.

Analysis

Dick becomes increasingly resentful of the Warrens' money and the ways it has determined important aspects of his life. Sitting in his workroom in the Villa Diana, he feels "a growing luxury in which the Divers lived, and the need for display which apparently went along with it" (p. 165). He resents his own house, "the house that Nicole had made, that Nicole's grandfather had paid for. He owned only his work house and the ground on which it stood... Never had a move been contemplated without Dick's figuring his share" (p. 170). He tries to maintain a "qualified independence," but "it was difficult" because Nicole wants "to own him" and wants him to "stand still forever" (p. 170). These thoughts reveal a deep dissatisfaction and contempt that has been building in Dick and has come to the fore since meeting Rosemary. The final straw, of course, is Baby Warren's interference in the business plans that Franz suggests. She encourages Bill to enter the partnership and start the clinic with Franz because she believes that this is best for Nicole. Nicole also encourages the decision, and when Baby offers to pay for the clinic herself, the deal is done. Dick ultimately surrenders and surrenders himself to the corrosive authority of the money.

Not surprisingly, it is also at this time that Dick begins to seriously and noticeably unravel. The novel makes brief but personal references to Dick's increasingly frequent drinking habits, recording the gin that he drinks in his workroom and the bottle of wine that he has with lunch. Dick has never been a heavy drinker, but now alcohol has become an undeniably strong presence in his life. His obsession with Rosemary's train tryst and his growing frustration with Nicole and her illness also chronicle his steady decline.

Perhaps most telling, however, is his pervasive obsession with young girls. Nicole notices this pattern and makes a snide remark about how he should dance with the "ickle durls" (p. 172), meaning little girls, and Dick must pretend not to look at them for fear of making her suspicious. But he actually is drawn to all of the younger girls, who have faces bearing the "innocent expectation of the possibilities inherent" in the situation (p. 174). As he loses his independence and his hopes for true intellectual greatness, Dick relaxes some of the discipline and self-control that have guided him and surrenders to some of his more dishonorable and dangerous impulses. This eros is not merely sexual; the "possibilities" with which he is infatuated include the great achievements still to come in these young people's lives, the achievements that no longer seem within his own grasp except vicariously through the young people he covets.

A year and a half later on the Zugersee, Dick feels sorry for Nicole, who is a victim of the passage of time, of the realization of her "perishable beauty" (p. 180), and of the loneliness of owning a husband who does not want to be owned. The clinic is beautiful, modern, and successful, and the patients like Dick better than Franz, though sometimes they think he neglects them. One female artist, who suffers from "nervous eczema" (p. 183), is his special patient and will only respond to Dick. His pity for her sometimes feels loving or sexual, and he treats her affectionately. With his other patients, however, it is clear that Dick is somewhat dismissive of their illnesses, and he spends much of the time at the hospital simply going through the motions.

After apathetically suffering the "chore" (p. 186) of lunching with the patients, Dick returns to the villa to find Nicole with a letter and a strange expression. The letter, Dick reads, is from a recently discharged (though still mentally ill) patient accusing Dick of seducing her fifteen-year-old daughter, who had come to the clinic to help her mother. Dick recalls that the girl had flirted with him and that "in an idle, almost indulgent way, he kissed her" (p. 187), but that he had not allowed the affair to progress any further. He tells Nicole to stop her nonsense. The entire family gets in the car for a drive to the Agiri Fair. Nicole is clearly upset, and Dick feels increasingly exhausted by his double role as husband and psychiatrist.

Nicole begins to run very suddenly, and Dick, leaving the children with a woman at a booth, runs after her. He finds her riding the ferris wheel, laughing hysterically. A small crowd is watching her. When the ride stops, Dick grabs her and reprimands her for losing control of herself. They argue. Nicole, after yelling hateful and suspicious accusations, becomes vulnerable and begs Dick to help her. Dick pities Nicole's dependence on him and decides that she must return to the clinic in Zurich as a patient.

In the car on the way back, Nicole grabs the wheel and intentionally swerves them off the road, almost killing them all. Once they have safely crashed against a tree, she laughs hysterically again. Dick lifts the children out of the car, telling them to walk up to the inn directly above them to get help. The inn proprietor comes to their aid and helps Dick push the car. Dick sends Nicole up to wait with the children. But remembering that there is liquor at the inn and that Nicole both wants and cannot drink it, he leaves the car and runs up to avert the disaster.

Three months later, Dick asks Franz for permission to take a leave of absence to attend the Psychiatric Conference in Berlin (though he has no intention of attending any of the sessions), admitting that he is worn out from caring for Nicole and needs time alone. On the plane to Munich, he thinks of his antipathy for the English and dreams of seducing a young peasant girl. His mind is divided between "tawdry souvenirs of boyhood" and "the low painful fire of intelligence" (p. 196).

In Munich, Dick happens upon Tommy Barban gambling in a café, "all relaxed for combat" (p. 197). Tommy asks how Dick and Nicole are, commenting that Dick does not look as "jaunty" and "spruce" as he used to (p. 196). Prince Chillicheff, one of Tommy's gambling partners, explains that he was in hiding in Russia and that and that Tommy killed three Red Guards to get him out. Mr. McKibbens invites Dick to accompany his family to Innsbruck the next day, but Dick declines.

Tommy then begins to discuss the story in the Herald reporting that Abe North was beaten to death in a speakeasy in New York. He had crawled all the way to the Racquet Club (or the Harvard Club, as Hannan disputes) before dying. When Dick awakes in the morning, he sees out his window a procession of World War I veterans marching to place wreaths on the tombs of the dead, and he feels a sudden sorrow "for Abe's death, and his own youth of ten years ago" (p. 200).

At Innsbruck, Dick thinks detachedly about Nicole and loves her "for her best self," but he also feels that he has lost himself, "somehow permitted his arsenal to be locked up in the Warren safety-deposit vaults," and that the spear of his intelligence and promise "had been blunted" (p. 201). He sees the shadow of a woman and notices that he feels "in love with every pretty woman" he sees now (p. 201).

Dick attempts to climb a mountain with the guide, but the weather forces them to return back to Innsbruck and try the next day. After dinner and wine, Dick thinks more about the pretty woman and considers having an affair. In his room, he opens a telegram from Buffalo forwarded through Nicole in Zurich. It announces that Dick's father has died. Dick feels lost and distraught; his father had been his moral guide. His father had been full of self-knowledge and lived by the code of "'good instincts,' honor, courtesy, and courage" (p. 204). Dick decides to go to America and, as he calls Nicole, he wishes "he had always been as good as he had intended to be" (p. 204).

Analysis

Dick's involvement with the clinic on the Zugersee reveals the ambivalence that Dick has always felt for the psychiatric profession. Earlier in the novel, he revealed that he had studied psychology only because a girl at Oxford in whom he was interested was taking the classes. Although the idea of professional prominence appealed to him, he was never fully committed to his profession or his patients. Aside from the one syphilitic female patient with whom he shares a somewhat unprofessional affectionate relationship, he views his patients with indifference and walks though the day in a mindless daze. He views lunch with his patients as a "chore" (p. 186) and takes no joy in his position. Though he is popular, his patients also think that he neglects them, and it is apparent that the ropes that have tied Dick to his profession and his motivation for success have been cut.

In this section, Dick suffers one of the two false accusations in the novel that involve his alleged seduction of a young girl. When Nicole receives a letter from one of Dick's former patients claiming that Dick seduced her fifteen-year-old daughter, Nicole's jealousy (and perhaps her own memories) become overwhelming. She suffers a major breakdown. Dick tries to defend himself, but the very accusation mars his honor and attests to the widening gap between him and his former honor and dignity. Powerless to control it, he is being associated with the criminality and recklessness that later define his character more thoroughly.

At this point, the marital bond between Dick and Nicole is truly cut. Dick realizes that "the dualism in his views of her--that of the husband, that of the psychiatrist--was increasingly paralyzing his faculties" (p. 188). "Many times he tried unsuccessfully to let go his hold on her," but this "left her holding nothing in her hands" (p. 180). He tries to distance himself from her, but she is still too dependent on him to be able to fully exist without their immediate mutual immersion. This intermingling has been illustrated by their signing their letters "Dicole," as if they operated as one person. Indeed, their combined energies seem only as strong as that of a single person. This halving and mutual integration explains why they cannot both be strong and independent simultaneously, but much switch trajectories. That is, Dick must weaken as Nicole strengthens, for neither is complete alone.

Nicole is also becoming anxious and dissatisfied. Dick pities her, knowing that she only pretends to love their children, and he senses that she has only been biding her time on the Zugersee. "She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned" (p. 180). Her mistrust of Dick has been growing since they met Rosemary, and the letter about the patient's young daughter completely puts her over the edge of reason. Yet, despite her resentment and anger, she still desperately needs Dick. Fitzgerald powerfully conveys this at the fair, when Dick finds Nicole after her fit of anger and, following her vitriolic accusations, she pleads with Dick to help her. She is a tower not erected in its own right, but one merely "suspended from him" (p. 191). They had "become one and equal, not opposite and complementary; she was Dick too, the drought in the marrow of his bones" (p. 191). Even the idea of death is more bearable to Nicole than losing Dick's support. Soon she is so frantic with pain and fear that she endangers the lives of her entire family in the car, an action that plainly reveals the deep mental illness and dependence that persist behind a beautiful and composed face.

Dick cannot avoid his own submergence beneath her crushing dependence. He is so worn out by the entire incident that he takes a leave of absence from the clinic and heads to Berlin. There, even Tommy Barban notices that he looks tired and deadened. Dick knows that he has lost himself, "locked up in the Warren safety-deposit vaults," and that all of the promise of his youth "had been blunted" (p. 201). He is so desperate to reclaim some element of his lost youth and his lost love that his obsession with women intensifies, and he falls "in love with every pretty woman" he sees (p. 201).

Dick brings his father from Buffalo to Westmoreland County, Virginia, to bury him among his relatives. Dick feels all of these family ties breaking. He speaks a final farewell: "Good-by, my father-good-by, all my fathers" (p. 205).

On the ship back to Europe, Dick runs into Albert McKisco, who is being hailed as a talented writer whose works "were pastiches of the best people of his time" (p. 205). Dick enjoys talking to him and Violet, finding that this success and confidence has changed them for the better. At the hotel in Rome, he sees Rosemary (who is there making a movie), and she approaches him. He is overcome yet again by her youth and beauty, and he tries to distract her from his unkempt exhaustion. She tells him to phone her at two the next day.

The next day, he thinks of Rosemary and compares her youthful energy to that of his daughter, Topsy. He wants her but is afraid that she will notice his "lesion of enthusiasm" (p. 208). At three, he calls Rosemary and is instructed to come to her room. He stops at the bar for a drink first and runs into Collis Clay, who is up from Florence to see Rosemary as well.

Rosemary is wearing black pajamas when Dick enters the room, and she asks after Nicole and the children. After several telephone interruptions, she "lowers the lights for love" (p. 210), and they kiss passionately. After another phone call, they move to her bed and continue their tryst, but Rosemary tells him that they cannot make love now because of her menstrual cycle. He asks her if she is a virgin and she suggests that she is, but he does not believe her. They go for a walk and she cavorts "childishly" for Dick (p. 211). She tells him that she has other plans for the night, but that she will take him to see the movie set the next morning.

In the morning, Rosemary glows "fresh and new in the morning sunshine" (p. 212), and they go to the set, where everything is dramatic and turbulent. Someone mistakes Dick for an actor, and a male actor named Nicotera follows Rosemary to the car and whispers something to her. At lunch, Dick drinks enough "so that his feeling of dissatisfaction" leaves him. Back at the hotel, the intimacy that had "begun with a childish infatuation" (p. 213) is finally consummated.

At night, Nicole has another dinner date, so Dick begrudgingly has a cocktail with Collis Clay. He realizes that his affair with Rosemary is simply indulgence and that Nicole is still "his girl" (p. 213). He runs into Baby Warren, and they dine together. At her prompting, Dick explains some of the trouble that Nicole has been having, and Baby suggests that a change (perhaps moving to London) might be good for her. Dick dismisses this idea. Collis Clay then joins them. When Dick speculates that he might have been the wrong person for Nicole, Baby assures him that they can arrange for her to marry someone else, not considering the possibility that Dick actually loves Nicole and has not been acting merely out of duty.

The next day, Dick's passion for Rosemary is heightened by the realization that they do not love each other. After Nicotera leaves and Nicole ends her phone conversation, Dick questions her about her love life again, suggesting that she has had many lovers. Nicotera calls Dick's room to reach Rosemary, and Dick, with extreme jealousy, realizes that they are lovers, too. Rosemary tries to assuage his fury, promising him that although she must leave with the company tomorrow, she will stay with Dick tonight. Dick is not appeased. Rosemary gets up to leave. Dick describes himself as the "Black Death" (p. 219), because he is unable to make people happy anymore.

After dinner, Dick sits in a bar talking to Collis Clay and making intentionally offensive remarks about Italians. As they walk toward the American Express, Dick realizes that "Rome was the end of his dream of Rosemary" (p. 220), and he subsequently is handed a note from her stating that she did not go to the party and that she is in her room. He tells the bellboy to lie and say that he could not find Dick. Dick goes to the Bonbonieri and feels sapped by Collis's lifelessness.

Dick gets drunk and starts a fight with the orchestra leader. He then approaches a pretty, young English girl and dances with her. He gets progressively drunk and makes a fool of himself after Collis leaves, almost walking into the ladies' room to find the girl, who has disappeared.

He decides to go back to the hotel but refuses to pay the taxi driver the full fare, arguing for a reduced rate. "The passionate impatience of the week" (p. 224) fires up in Dick, and he slaps the taxi driver's face. He is surrounded and fights ineffectually until the men decide to settle it at the police office. An officer orders Dick to pay the full fare, but Dick merely punches the driver in the jaw. He is beaten to unconsciousness and awakes with handcuffs on and being unable to open an eye. He offers a taxi driver two hundred lire to go to Baby's hotel and summon her aid. He is put in a jail cell.

A little before four in the morning, the concierge wakes Baby Warren and explains that Dick is in jail and terribly hurt. Baby gets in a cab and goes to the prison, where she finds him by the sound of his screaming. He tells her that they beat him and put out his eye, and Baby screams at the two guards.

Baby takes a taxi to the American Embassy and, after ringing the bell, is met by a sleepy porter who informs her that no one is awake--she must return at nine. She argues with him until another man appears and asks about the commotion. Baby cries for him to come to the prison and get Dick out immediately, but he tells her that if she wants Dick's protection, she must go to the Consulate at nine. He gives her the address, but when Baby arrives there, it is empty. Baby tries to get back to the jail but gets lost along the way. She decides to enlist Collis Clay in her mission. She wakes him up and, together, they find the address of the jail and go there.

Collis stays with Dick while Baby goes to the Consul and then to call a doctor. At the Consulate's office, she becomes impatient with waiting and pushes in to speak with the Consul, threatening that she will use her power against him if he does not help. Baby wins with her demanding insistence, and the vice-consul, Mr. Swanson, is sent with her.

At the prison, Dick drinks a beer and waits. He feels a "vast criminal irresponsibility" (p. 233) and knows that he will never be the same again. Swanson appears and tells Dick that he will probably be able to get him out of jail, but he also warns him to be careful. As Dick waits for the Consulate to settle matters with the judge, he is mistaken for a man convicted of raping and slaying a five-year-old girl. Within minutes, however, Dick is freed. He returns to the hotel with Baby and the doctor for treatment. Baby is satisfied with Dick's new moral inferiority, for it gives her even more power over him.

Analysis

The death of Dick's father truly marks the death of Dick's former self and former life. He is distraught when he receives the telegram. His father had been his moral guide and had taught him to live by noble values. During his heroic years, Dick met these standards and lived his life admirably. Following this loss, Dick deteriorates more rapidly. He abandons his good instincts and gives into all of his dishonorable ones, such as alcohol, seduction, and violence. He becomes extremely self-destructive and loses all of the control and discipline that made his former success possible. Dick's marriage to Nicole and his affair with Rosemary progressively weakened the supports that held up his castle of reason, dignity, and honor. The death of his father, however, symbolizes the complete collapse of the very foundation upon which this castle was built. The floodgates have been entirely destroyed, and Dick no longer has the strength or the will to be "as good as he had intended to be" (p. 204).

This death is also symbolic of the end of the old world that Dick has been trying to embody and to save in spite of his new-world temptations. Dick's father represented everything that was honorable about the prewar sensibility and mentality. Dick mourns the loss of this world, which he makes clear at the visit to the trenches, and the death of this world results necessarily from and is facilitated by the anarchy of postwar society. As Dick stands at the grave, he feels his ties to his family and his entire past break, and his final farewell addresses both a person and an era: "Good by, my father--good-by, all my fathers" (p. 205). This is Dick's farewell to the last connection to his former self.

His extremely uncharacteristic behavior in Rome is a testament to this assertion. The next example of Dick's irrevocable decline is the consummation of his affair with Rosemary back in Rome. When he sees her, he is attracted once again to her beauty and youth. He even compares her to his own daughter: "She was young and magnetic, but so was Topsy" (p. 207). This reflection highlights both the age difference between Dick and Rosemary (he is indeed old enough to be her father) and the incestuous perversion that has entered his diseased mind. In addition, he is now so dependent on alcohol that he must stop at the bar even on his way from his room to Rosemary's. In her bed, Dick bears up "her fragility on his arms until she [is] poised half a foot above him" (p. 211), which is an extremely paternal gesture. She cavorts "childishly" for him (p. 211), and when they finally do have sex, Rosemary's youth and innocence are further emphasized by the assertion that she has been, until now, a virgin. In the first section of the novel, Dick refused to sleep with Rosemary, believing her to be too young for him. Yet his paternal interest in her was always contaminated by a shameful sexual interest, and now that all of Dick's ties to his former honor and discipline are cut, he allows himself to indulge in his own self-destruction.

Dick's indulgence also extends to violence and criminality when he is overcome by an immature jealousy of Nicotera and, in a sort of tantrum, drinks himself and fights himself into an Italian jail. He lets himself become belligerent, starting a fight with the orchestra master at a club and then another with a taxi driver, and then continues in that vein until he is beaten unconscious and thrown in jail. The Lucky Dick of Yale and Oxford could hardly have conceived of being in this situation, and this contrast highlights how very far Dick Diver has fallen. He has relinquished all dignity and self-control.

Moreover, he no longer has the strength or integrity to deny the help of Baby Warren. In fact, he relies upon her to have him freed from jail, and this position absolutely thrills her. She realizes that the Warren domination over Dick is now complete. Not only does she have the financial superiority, but now she also has the moral superiority in the relationship.

Fitzgerald's treatment of Baby Warren's wealth, as well as the power that accompanies it, is not celebratory. Baby has been somewhat of a villain from the start. She and her wealth have contributed to the demise of Dick's independence and to his eventual downfall, and here we see that even while she is being helpful to Dick, she is inwardly celebrating her conniving and inhuman authority. The criticism of wealth and power also extends to the scene at the American Embassy. The indifference of the ridiculous-looking man in the Persian robe and the pink cold cream, combined with his indifference and his unwillingness to provide assistance, presents a damning portrait of the upper class. Even Dick's privileges have not saved him from himself.

Back at the clinic, Kaethe Gregorovius expresses her jealousy and dislike of Nicole to Franz, who has been paying extra attention to the patient in Dick's absence. Franz reminds her that it is Nicole's money that has paid for the clinic.

Following the dinner held upon Dick's return, Kaethe resumes her criticism, calling attention to his wounds and scars: "He's been on debauch!" (p. 241); "Dick is no longer a serious man" (p. 241). Although Franz immediately comes to Dick's defense, the viewpoint sinks in and permanently changes his opinion of Dick Diver.

In May, when Dick enters Franz's office to tell him that the beloved artist for whom Dick has been caring has died, Franz sends him to Lausanne to take care of a case of a Chilean man trying to cure his son of homosexuality. Dick meets a Spaniard named Senor Pardo y Cuidad Real, who is furious about his son's lack of self-control in sex and drinking. Dick meets the son, Francisco, who is about twenty and who expresses a desire to change his behavior. Suddenly, Royal Dumphry appears, and both Dick and Francisco (from shame) try to escape him. At the last moment, Dumphry reveals that Devereux Warren is in Lausanne and is dying. Dick gets the name of Doctor Dangeu and calls him immediately. At Doctor Dangeu's house, Dick learns that Mr. Warren is indeed dying imminently due to alcohol-related liver failure.

That evening, Dick sees Senor Real, who pleads with Dick to cure Francisco and to take him back to the clinic, but Dick refuses, saying that he cannot commit a person on such grounds. Dick then meets the doctor in the lobby, who tells him that Mr. Warren has requested to see Nicole. Dick goes to visit him and tells him that he will consult Franz to determine if Nicole is strong enough to see her father. Dick calls the clinic and leaves a message with Kaethe for Franz that Nicole's father is dying and that Franz should call Dick. He forgets to warn her not to tell Nicole and, perhaps accidentally, Kaethe spills the bad news. Nicole gets on a train to Lausanne.

Back in Lausanne, a nun informs Dick that Mr. Warren has left, presumably for America. When he meets Nicole at the station, he informs her of Mr. Warren's departure. They go for a drink, planning to return home the next day.

One week later, patient Von Cohn Morris (committed primarily to be cured of alcoholism) is removed from the clinic by his parents, who are furious at their son's report that Dick often smells of liquor. Upon reflection, Dick realizes that he has been drinking a half-pint of alcohol a da. He decides to cut back by half. When Franz arrives, Dick tells him about the "rotten scene" (p. 254) with the Morrises. Franz expresses his concern over Dick's drinking habits and suggests that he take another leave of absence. They both agree that Dick's "heart is not in the project anymore" (p. 256) and decide to take Nicole's money out of the hospital gradually. Dick is relieved, having long felt "the ethics of his profession dissolving into a lifeless mass" (p. 256).

The Divers decide to move back to their home on the French Riviera, and they spend the preceding summer in German spas and French Cathedral towns. Dick becomes preoccupied with his children and notices, with concern, that Topsy looks very much like her mother. They are also very wealthy and travel in style with enormous amounts of belongings. They arrive at Boyen to spend a few weeks with Mary North, now the Contessa di Minghetti since being re-married. In private, Dick and Nicole make fun of Mary. Nicole decides that Lanier and Topsy must stay away from the Conte's children, one of whom is ill. After dinner, Nicole reprimands Dick for drinking so much and then saying inadvisable things. Dick admits that he is "not much like [himself] any more" (p. 260).

The next day, Lanier reports to his parents that he was instructed to take a bath in one of the di Minghetti children's dirty bathwater. When they see a woman whom they assume is the maid, they reprimand her for bathing Lanier in the dirty bathwater. The next morning, Mary confronts the Divers with the story, explaining that they had mistaken di Minghetti's sister for a maid and that Dick had been too drunk to understand Mary the other night when she told Dick that they were Himadoun. They call Lanier in to settle the matter of the dirty bathwater, and they discover that he was probably mistaken. The Divers write apology notes to the Himadoun and leave early, having deeply insulted Mary.

At Villa Diana, Dick fires the cook, Augustine (who is brandishing a knife), for drinking the vintage wines. She reciprocates by telling Nicole that he drinks "all the time" (p. 265). Dick offers her twice as much money as he owes her to make her leave hastily. Over dinner, Nicole wonders aloud if they can continue as they are, and she tells Dick that he used to want to create things, but now he just wants to "smash them up" (p. 267). She is frightened by his silence, his violence, and his "almost unnatural interest in the children" (p. 267). Drunk, Dick insists that they go out to the motor yacht to ask the people on it if they are happy. They are invited onto the yacht, and they join the party.

Tommy is there, and Nicole runs to him ecstatically. The two talk affectionately. In the dining salon, Dick argues with Lady Carolyn and offends her after she accuses him of "associating with a questionable crowd in Lausanne" (p. 272). Dick disappears for a while, and Nicole finds him at the bow. He says they are both ruined and grabs her as if they will jump to their death together over the bow, but he lets her go.

Tommy finds the two of them and brings them back inside. He notes to Nicole that Dick is drinking too much. On shore, Tommy drives them home as Dick falls into a drunken sleep.

Analysis

Dick's excursion to cure a young Chilean man of his homosexuality and alcoholism is extremely ironic (if not also hypocritical) in light of his own problems with drinking and his abnormal sexual interests. Senor Real describes his son as "corrupt" (p. 244) and complains that his son has no self-control. He begs Dick to treat his son, even to bring him back to the clinic, not realizing that Dick is no longer capable of helping anyone. He already described himself as the "Black Death," and his existence has indeed transformed into a kind of fatal infection. In fact, nevertheless, Dick and Francisco have a long and pleasant conversation, and Dick is able to relate himself to this man: "It was as close as Dick had ever come to comprehending such a character from any but the pathological angle" (p. 245). Dick is able to think beyond the homophobia of the local culture not as a matter of justice, but because he finally can identify personally with the notion of pervasive perversion.

Indeed, the fact that Dick has lost all self-control is apparent in these chapters, which describe the severity of his alcoholism and how it ruins his career. When he returns from Rome, Kaethe Gregorovius sees the wounds on his face and smells the alcohol on his breath, and she sees more clearly than anyone else that "Dick is no longer a serious man" (p. 241). The reader becomes even more convinced when the parents of one of Dick's patients remove him from the clinic because of Dick's drinking. Throughout Dick's decline, much of his behavior has been presented from Dick's own perspective. Now that Fitzgerald provides more objective views of Dick Diver, it becomes even more apparent that he has completely deteriorated. As a result of this disintegration, Franz asks him to leave the clinic, and it is without any regret whatsoever that Dick throws away the career that used to be his most important personal ambition (even if he was never fully dedicated even to that profession).

The incest motif also reappears in this section, as Dick becomes aware that Topsy looks like Nicole: "She was nine and very fair and exquisitely made like Nicole, and in the past Dick had worried about that" (p. 257). Though the exact source of Dick's worry remains ambiguous, the implication is that he worried he would become sexually attracted to his daughter. To extend the established similarities between Dick and Devereux Warren is the realization that he has an unhealthy preoccupation with his own daughter. He spends a great deal of time with them and seems to derive his only pleasure from their company. Nicole senses this problem and is disturbed by his "almost unnatural interest in the children" (p. 267).

This fear and disappointment is perhaps what drives Nicole to Tommy Barban's side on the yacht and, eventually into her romantic relationship with and marriage to Tommy. In fact, just as the death of Dick's father marked the true terminus of Dick's former strength and opened the way for his increasing weakness, so does the death of Devereux Warren mark the point at which Nicole finally turns securely toward increasing strength and eventual recovery. After all, Dick is too tied up with her former illness and on-again, off-again recovery.

In the morning, Dick apologizes to Nicole for his behavior. She believes that "his awful faculty of being right seemed to have deserted him at last" (p. 275). Dick and Tommy argue about Nicole, and she derives a sense of satisfaction from knowing that they are both in love with her. She considers having an affair with Tommy and, as he is about to leave, Nicole goes to get him a jar of camphor rub to cure Tommy's cough. Dick instructs Nicole not to give Tommy the whole jar, which must be ordered from Paris, but Nicole gives it to him anyway, and this gesture signifies "the sin she had committed" (p. 279) and the end of the Divers as a couple.

In June, the Divers receive a note from Rosemary stating that she will be at Gausse's the next day and wants to see them. On that morning, Nicole is full of apprehension about the future of her relationship with Dick. She senses the imminence of a leap from her secure foothold, and she feels that both she and Dick are changing, but she still senses that they are as yet undefined. His indifference is apparent in his insincerity and drinking habits. She feels a sense of relief when she considers being independent of him. Nicole feels sorry for Dick as he looks around the beach "like a deposed ruler secretly visiting an old court" (p. 280). Rosemary is in the water, and they swim out to meet her. As Dick and Rosemary begin to flatter and flirt, Nicole swims back to shore (registering that she is returning to stable ground and leaving him afloat with his desires).

They decide to go aquaplaning with Nicole and her friends, and Nicole suspects that Dick will not be able to accomplish the same stunts that he used to. Trying to show off for Rosemary, he tries to do a trick in which he lifts another man on his shoulders as he is pulled behind the boat. He tries three times, his failures becoming progressively more humiliating. Nicole is annoyed and full of contempt for his showing off. Later, Dick confesses to Rosemary that he changed a while back--saying despairingly that "the manner remains intact for some time after the morale breaks" (p. 285).

They see Mary North, who practically ignores the Divers when she goes to speak with Rosemary. Rosemary recalls that Dick's public reputation has been demolished and, as she speaks to him about acting, she notices that Nicole is becoming impatient. Finally, Nicole leaves and says she will send someone to pick up Dick and the children. Alone in the car, Nicole feels confident and cured. She feels "almost complete." "Knowing vaguely that Dick had planned for her to have it" (p. 289), she writes a provocative letter to Tommy when she arrives at home. The next morning, Dick goes to Provence for a few days by himself, and when Tommy calls to say that he is coming over, Nicole welcomes him.

Nicole gets ready for Tommy, making "her person into the trimmest of gardens" (p. 291) and noticing how young-looking and beautiful she still is. She is conscious of wanting to have an affair and, more abstractly, of wanting to act on impulse and desire. When Tommy arrives, they hold and kiss each other and decide to spend the afternoon passionately in a hotel in Corniche.

After they have made love, they see an American ship leaving and the girls on shore waving goodbye. They dine, swim, and make love again, and Nicole can feel her old, true self emerging as Dick's influence dissolves. They leave in the middle of the night to get Nicole back to the Villa Diana before daybreak.

Dick returns home, admitting to Nicole that he spent the night with Rosemary. Meanwhile, she admits to him that she spent the night with Tommy. Tommy calls and urges Nicole to leave Dick, but she postpones the decision. She is suddenly burdened by remorse and goes out to his sanctuary. She stands and watches him, feeling truly sorry for him and wondering whether he had planned and willed her independence. She approaches him tenderly, but he insults her, provoking her to accuse him of trying to blame his failure of a life on her. She recalls the resentments of the past decade and, within a matter of minutes, is finally truly free of him. She has "cut the cord forever," and Dick is aware that "The case is finished" (p. 302).

Dick receives a phone call in the middle of the night from the police in Antibes stating that Mary North and Caroline Sibley-Biers are in jail for dressing as French sailors and picking up two young women. Dick, though he does not like either woman, runs off (picking up Gausse along the way) to help them and protect their reputations. The matter is complicated by the fact that one of the girls was from a respectable family, and the infuriated family is demanding money. Dick consults the chief of police. He lies to the chief and offers him five thousand dollars with which to appease the families. The women are quickly released.

Later, Nicole and Dick are having their hair cut when Tommy enters the barber shop and asks to speak to them both. In a café, Tommy tells Dick that Nicole no longer loves him, that their marriage is over, and that Nicole and Tommy wish to be together. Nicole confirms this, and Tommy accuses Dick of treating her like a patient. As they negotiate the web of their relationships, the Tour de France blurs by the window. A lone cyclist in a red jersey rides by confidently first, followed by three more, and then the great mass of riders who would lose the race come later. Dick essentially agrees to grant Nicole a divorce and walks away as Nicole realizes that he probably had anticipated everything from the beginning.

Dick spends his last full day on the Riviera with his children, wanting to "hold them close for hours" (p. 311). He says goodbye to his longtime employees and leaves notes for Nicole and Baby Warren. Right before leaving for America, he stops by Gausse's beach for a last look. Nicole and Baby arrive there, and they notice Dick observing the beach from a rock. Baby has already dismissed him, but Nicole admits that he was a good husband to her. He sits and drinks with Mary Minghetti and Caroline Sibley-Biers, avoiding the view of Nicole and Tommy. He stands up unsteadily and blesses the beach before leaving.

Nicole and Dick stay in touch after she remarries. He opens an unsuccessful office in Buffalo and subsequently moves to several small towns in New York, practicing general medicine. She hears that he bicycles a great deal and always seems to be working on a medical treatise. He allegedly becomes somehow illegally entangled with a girl who works at a grocery store. After this, he sends only one more letter to say that he is practicing in Geneva, New York. He seems to live an unremarkable and anonymous existence thereafter.

Analysis

The final chapters document Nicole's steady rise to complete recovery and, as an inevitable consequence, her abandonment of Dick. She has become well enough (and Dick has deteriorated enough) to see him with critical judgment. She criticizes him for drinking as much as he does, and she recognizes the unhealthiness of his attention to their children. She believes that "his awful faculty of being right seemed to have deserted him at last" (p. 275), and she can sense that she has become mentally and emotionally more capable than the husband who saved her from complete insanity. Her decision to give Tommy Barban the entire jar of camphor rub is described a "sin" (p. 279) because it is a defiance of Dick's authority as well as a redirection of her care, concern, and loyalty to another man. She knows that she is about to take a leap from the secure foothold that has supported her for ten years, and the events at the end of the book serve to increase her resolve to propel herself forward to independence and maturity.

Dick also senses this imminent leap. He knows that he has changed. He even admits as much to Rosemary, telling her that the change took place a while back but that "the manners remain intact for some time after the morale breaks" (p. 285). He is not at all surprised by Nicole's eventual decision to leave him for Tommy Barban. In fact, Nicole senses that Dick had "planned for her to have" (p. 289) this completeness and independence. In fact, giving Nicole up is arguably the one thing that Dick does with dignity in the entire final section of the novel. It seems that, as Nicole suspects, he was aware that their marriage would end this way from the moment he fell in love with her (he did confront some second thoughts at the time), and it is in this way that Dick can be accused of actively contributing to his own demise. In addition to the circumstantial pressures of the Warren fortune, being both husband and doctor to Nicole, the death of his father, and the death of an entire era, Dick facilitated his own failure through choices that he chose and understood. Thus Dick's story is a 20th-century tragedy. He becomes a pitiful character, making failed attempts at water stunts and confronting the complete loss of his former self.

His disintegration, moreover, is cathartic for Nicole. Her loss of her former self means completely the opposite as she throws off the shackles of her illness and dependence and finally steps into the light of a mind unclouded by past demons. She looks at herself and sees all of the beauty and youth that she had not been able to enjoy for quite a long time. By cutting "the cord" (p. 302), Nicole not only overcomes her dependence on Dick, but also cuts the remaining threads of the traumatic past that tied her to her real father.

When Dick blesses the beach at Gausse's, where Nicole is kneeling, before he leaves forever for America, we see the final enactment of their complicated relationship in which Dick was both a father figure, and a kind of spiritual father for Nicole. This scene provides her final expression of gratitude for everything he has done for her, and it provides his final blessing for the life that he had always planned for her to have.

The novel's final chapter captures the poignant failure and anonymity that defines Dick Diver's life after he returns to America. He moves from small town to small town, engaging only in a general practice and thereby disposing of all of the training, ambition, and promise that he once had. His relationship with a girl at a grocery store is suspicious, and the fact that it ends in a lawsuit suggests that Dick has continued to allow his unhealthy desire for girls to overcome his will and self-control. His reported attempts to write a medical treatise only make him seem more pathetic, since he has proven that he is incapable of completing such a project (an idea that must have haunted Fitzgerald as his work on the novel progressed). The narrative of this chapter is journalistic in style, reporting on events in the same sparse and objective tone that Fitzgerald employed at the beginning of the second section, when Dick's early years as a scholar were described. The consistency of tone between these two sections juxtaposes them in a way that emphasizes the tragedy of Dick's situation. Since Dick was an active participant in taking the path that would lead to his self-destruction, he has become a tragic hero who has lost himself as he has facilitated the rebirth of a strong, confident Nicole.

• Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald
• About Tender is the Night
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Glossary of Terms
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Book 1, Chapters i-iv
• Summary and Analysis of Book 1, Chapters v-x
• Summary and Analysis of Book 1, Chapters xi-xv
• Summary and Analysis of Book 1, Chapters xvi-xx
• Summary and Analysis of Book 1, Chapters xxi-xxv
• Summary and Analysis of Book 2, Chapters i-v