Tender is the Night

Tender is the Night Essay Questions

  1. 1

    How does Fitzgerald represent sexuality in the novel, and how do individual characters see the range of their sexual choices? How is morality involved with sexuality in the novel?

  2. 2

    How is Dick Diver like Ulysses S. Grant, and at what stages in his life is he more like or less like the president or the general?

  3. 3

    What is the significance of the Tour de France in the scene where Nicole and Tommy tell Dick that their marriage is over?

  4. 4

    What does World War I represent in the novel? Which characters have a prewar mentality, which have a postwar mentality, and who seems to have both or neither mentality?

  5. 5

    To what extent Is Dick a tragic hero? How much of his fate has been determined by external factors, and how much has Dick contributed to his own undoing? Did Dick really prophesy his own destruction or Nicole's final healing, as Nicole suggests?

  6. 6

    How does the Warren fortune influence Dick's life?

  7. 7

    At what point does Dick's complete downfall become inevitable? Before that point, in which ways did Dick still have a chance to recover?

  8. 8

    Does Nicole ever fully recover? What is the evidence for and against her full recovery?

  9. 9

    Why does Nicole fall in love with Tommy Barban? How is he similar to or different from Dick and/or Nicole?

  10. 10

    What is the significance of the movie Daddy's Girl?