Tender Is the Night

This novel, like most of Fitzgerald’s other fiction, demonstrates the failure of the American Dream and the strange coping mechanisms people adopt in light of that failure. The American Dream was a popular term, especially in the 20^th century, for the ideal of America as a place where anyone could succeed in life so long as they worked hard and had merit. Understood in more concrete terms, the American Dream included such commodities: a family, a fortune, a career, and a good reputation.

Having earned their marriage, family, money, and apparent success, Dick and Nicole Diver are first shown on vacation, settled and content, enjoying the benefits of their status in life. It is within this season of their story that the seeds of discontentment take root: Dick searches for romance in someone other than his wife and Nicole begins relapsing into mental health episodes. While by appearances, they should be happy in their comfortable, upper-class existence, Fitzgerald exposes the dissatisfaction and disillusionment that lurk beneath the luxurious façade. The book resonates with the principle that it is futile to judge success by the worldly or practical terms of reputation, wealth, status, or the pleasures of life—true happiness is more elusive, maybe impossible, and one eventually fades into one’s place in the grave, unremembered.