F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota in 1896. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, and their traumatic marriage became the leading influence in his writing. Among his publications were five novels: This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Last Tycoon (his last, unfinished work). He died in 1940, having rightfully earned a place among the greatest writers of his time.
Fitzgerald is renowned for his depiction of the 1920s jazz era, and is considered to have shaped and formed the artistic leanings and culture of that time with his writings. While The Great Gatsby is the author's most famous novel, Tender is the Night offers a fascinating insight into the author himself, his life, and the culture and society of the time.
An Overview of the Plot
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr. Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase. She is terrified of men, having been the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money, enjoying a lavish and decadent lifestyle.
Tender is the Night is the moving account of the collapse of a marriage and an attempt to diagnose the sickness and destruction that money breeds. Against a background of the Riviera, Paris and Switzerland, the novel twists and weaves its way along to a devastating conclusion.
The novel is beautifully written and structured, guiding the reader through a plot based more on characterization than events. There is a sense of mystery and confusion about the writing, as if Fitzgerald is trying to give an impression of an unraveling of minds to accompany Nicole’s own madness.
Elegant Writing and Considered Emotions
Fitzgerald’s use of language in the text is beautiful, as he weaves the plot of the main characters and takes the reader forward into the intricacies of mental illness and despair. The characters themselves are both likeable and easy to identify with. They represent the excesses and quirkiness of the jazz era which Fitzgerald himself was immersed in, and somewhat thought to have created through his art.
Though F. Scott Fitzgerald is most famous for the superb The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night represents a dark and emotional tale which in many ways mirrors the writers own experiences of his relationship with Zelda, his wife. Zelda suffered from a mental illness which brought a huge amount of destruction to their marriage, and one can read beneath the lines of Tender is the Night to reach an empathic and yearning need for self-confession.
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