Tender is the Night | Themes

Alcoholism
Alcohol came to play a leading role in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. During his wife’s emotional decline, he drank excessively, and though he technically died of a heart attack, there is no question that his lifestyle and his abuse of alcohol played a contributing role in his death. Likewise, alcohol came to rule and ruin Dick Diver. When we first meet Diver, he is a happy-go-lucky bon vivant, always reaching for a drink but never in excess. By the novel’s conclusion, however, alcohol has helped to ruin his marriage and his career.

Dick Diver, however,...


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