A Nightmare In The Tender Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald is a famous modern American writer, the spokesman of the American Jazz Age. Tender Is the Night is his autobiographical and psychoanalytical novel. This novel, with the disillusionment of American dream as its theme, tells a story of deterioration. This thesis analyzes its theme with Freudian psychoanalytical theory, which is a rather new perspective up to now. Besides analyzing the theme by looking into the writer's motivation of creation, this thesis mainly analyzes the leading protagonist Dick Diver's character, weakness in his personality and the consequent morbid and incestuous loves with Nicole and Rosemary. This thesis displays the destiny of the hero's disillusionment and deterioration in a new method, bestowing readers a new angle for understanding its theme.