Implications of Modernist Thought in Tender Is the Night
The implications of modernist thought in F. Scott Fitzgeralds' Tender Is the Night, become apparent when conceptualizing crime and punishment. Besides the murder of the Negro in the Parisian hotel, the idea of crime is plastic; adultery, deceit, moral depravity barely have consequences. Actions committed with good intentions often end in despair, such as the marriage of Dick and Nicole Diver. Similarly, seduction and dissimulation are not often met with ensuing punishment. Actions, whether they be morally right or wrong, tend to remain in a staid state without the traditional response. The modernists place characters in various moments and situations that do not necessarily conclude in the set conception of "punishment."
Nicole and Dick Diver both commit "crimes" of infidelity during their marriage. While Dick's tryst with Rosemary ceases without any succinct culmination, Nicole sleeps with Tommy and ends her marriage to elope with him. Neither crime however, is met with a punishment. While Dick slowly loses his manner of attraction and wiles with women, he sinks into apathy and alcoholism. Fitzgerald does not seem to be punishing Dick in any way for his fleeting romance with Rosemary; rather, his empty life is almost an inevitability, another set of moments without weighty cause or effect. Nicole's actual instant of infidelity is described as a "moment" - not as a crime, a moral dilemma or anything deserving traditional punishment. She drifts into her affair in the same way she tends to her garden or glances at her children. Her love for Tommy Barban is simply situational; Dick was no longer fulfilling her in the manner she expect...
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...s vision of Rosemary and his undying need for her body in his arms, he calls Nicole and demands that they have dinner and see a play in the evening. The crime is masked completely by the conventions that surround their lives. The punishment, therefore, remains unclear. They both continue a farce of a relationship while lying to themselves and negating any concept of criminality in their own actions. The moments come and go, the crimes and punishments are vague and ephemeral. The crimes of each of all the characters eventually effect their own psyches - their lives are damaged by their apparent neglect of reality. Living in each moment without bearing the consequences has a acute effect on Dick, but mostly leaves Nicole, Tommy and Rosemary unbroken.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Tender is the Night" Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1933.
In Italy, after he begins his affair with Rosemary, Dick is disillusioned with her. He finds that Rosemary belongs to other people. In his disillusionment, his thoughts turn to Nicole, and how she is still "his girl - too often he was sick at heart about her, yet she was his girl" (213). Rosemary is no longer his possession solely and this cracks his surface. He returns to his love for Nicole like a guard, because he is weak without it. He refers to it as "an obscuring dye" (217). He is Nicole, and Nicole is he, and at this point the line between them has been blurred to bring them together. Dick does not realize that as much as he believes Nicole depends on him, he is dependent on her. He depends on her neediness to define him. Dick knows, however, that Nicole is important to him and that the thought "that she should die, sink into mental darkness, love another man, made him physically sick"(217). Not only is this excellent foreshadowing on Fitzgerald's part, but it gives us a measure just how dependent Dick is. Physical illness is uncontrollable. If even the thought makes causes him to have psychosomatic symptoms, it is imaginable what the actuality would bring. Dick needs Nicole badly, more so than ever at this point.
Dick Diver's love for his wife, Nicole, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, is based purely on his need to assert control and act as care taker to her due to her illness. He assumes this role in order to feel validation for his own lack of achievement in his professional life. The only true success he can be credited is Nicole's 'cure,' achieved through his devotion and care; thus he continually tries to replicate this previous success in his relationships to other young girls. He looks to be a source of caring and stability just as he had been for Nicole, relying on him for caring and protection from her illness.
This novel is brought to life by narrator Nick Carraway who is a moral Midwestern man, infatuated, much as Fitzgerald was, by the parties and pizzazz of the east. Gatsby is a mysterious rich man, taken by love, but caught up in the deviant nature of the days. The morals of the entire cast in this ballet are as whimsical as the sheets of Jazz music that emanated from the musicians of the day. This constant change of character was always more eloquently explained by the language Fitzgerald used, than the actual plot of the story. The language that Fitzgerald used within te story, was more indicative to the actual story than the plot itself. While the character analysis of many of the characters may seem incomplete, by simply analyzing the words that were used to describe the characters and their surroundings, one can derive an in-depth hypothesis about each.
“Servant trouble…political worries…almost neurosis…drinking increased…arguments with Scottie…quarrel with Hemingway…quarrel with Bunny Wilson…quarrel with Gerald Murphy…breakdown of car…tight at Eddie Poe’s…sick again…first borrowing from mother…sick… ‘The Fire’…Zelda weakens and goes to Hopkins…one servant and eating out.” (Mayfield 207)
Dubbed the ‘roaring 20s’, because of the massive rise in America’s economy, this social and historical context is widely remembered for its impressive parties and sensationalist attitude. However, Fitzgerald also conveys a more sinister side to this culture through numerous affairs, poverty and a rampage of organised crime. By exposing this moral downfall, Fitzgerald reveals to the responder his value of the American dream and his belief of its decline. As a writer, Fitzgerald was always very much concerned with the present times, consequently, his writing style and plot reflects his own experiences of this era. So similar were the lives of Fitzgerald’s characters to his own that he once commented, “sometimes I don't know whether Zelda (his wife) and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels”. In 1924, Fitzgerald was affected by Zelda’s brief affair with a young French pilot, provoking him to lock her in their house. A construction of this experience can be seen in the way Fitzgerald depicts the 1290s context. For example in ‘The Great Gatsby’, there are numerous affairs and at one point, Mr Wilson locks up his wife to pre...
The ethics of society in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are clearly noted through the endless partying, fancy houses, and the lavishness of their lives. Time and time again Fitzgerald displays his skills of developing his characters through plots and scenes of enchanting parties and mansions. Through these scenarios, the reader develops a sense of the purposelessness of the rich, the values of West and East Egg society, and Gatsby. Each individual scene reveals the subtle nuances of each and every character. Is shown to the reader in such a way that the reader picks up an idea of who each character is. By a landslide, the Great Gatsby owes a lot of its character development to its settings. The settings of The Great Gatsby provides for its substantial character development.
Fitzgerald's book at first overwhelms the reader with poetic descriptions of human feelings, of landscapes, buildings and colors. Everything seems to have a symbolic meaning, but it seems to be so strong that no one really tries to look what's happening behind those beautiful words. If you dig deeper you will discover that hidden beneath those near-lyrics are blatancies, at best.
Search for Innocence in American Modernism. American Literature from its very beginning has been centered around the theme of innocence. The Puritans wrote about abandoning the corruption of Europe to find innocence in a new world. The Romantics saw innocence and power in nature and often wrote of escaping from civilization to return to nature. After the Civil War, however, the innocence of the nation was challenged.
The author also takes many universal literary ideas and alters them to demonstrate that just as the reader doesn’t expect certain twists in the plot of the novel, the people of the time did not expect the 1920s to experience such a terrible change in fortune. Fitzgerald switches around
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