Tender Is The Night:Growth And Decadence Under Ethical Selections

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, one of the most outstanding writers in the history of American literature, is widely regarded as the spokesman of Jazz Age, the representative novelist of Lost Generation and the excellent chronicler. His works often reveal historical scenes vividly and reflect the spiritual outlook, living flavor and social features truly and objectively. Thus, his works are sought after among readers and commentators. Tender Is the Night was praised as Fitzgerald’s brilliant novel by Arthur Mizener, a famous specialist in studying Fitzgerald. The novel is about Dick Diver, a dynamic and accomplished psychologist, marrying his patient Nicole Warren. The exhausting and wretched marriage results in his negligence of career and transitory extramarital love with a young actress, Rosemary.Ethical literary criticism as an approach, focuses on the ethical factors in literary works that generate social events and influence characters’fates. It illustrates and evaluates the processes and results of characters’ethical selections, and reveals ethical value in the historical ethical stance, which highly corresponds to the protagonists’ growth or decadence in the novel. The analysis of the novel from this perspective will facilitate the comprehension of protagonists’fates, so this thesis employs Ethical Literary Criticism to probe into their ethical appeals, analyze ethical predicaments, and further explain the importance of making ethical selections in accordance with specific ethical identities.This thesis is composed of six parts.Chapter one is the introduction to the writer, the work and studies on this novel from different perspectives both at home and abroad; it outlines the theoretic foundation-Ethical Literary Criticism and briefly compares this theory with Ethics and Moral Criticism respectively. Moreover, the significance of the researched is epitomized as well.Chapter two is about two typical social ethics manifested in the novel during the Jazz Age. The first one is the egoism which replaces traditional social altruism. The second one is the lifestyle feminism that displaces activist feminism. This part focuses on conversations of old ethics into the new one in the transitional society, which facilitates readers’understanding of protagonists’ethical selections from a broad ethical environment.Chapter three discusses Rosemary’s growth under ethical selections in three aspects:views of love and marriage, mother-daughter relationship, vision of career. And this chapter combining with the text, further analyzes ethical predicaments that she is confronted with, as well as the relevant results after ethical selections.Chapter four analyzes Dick’s decadence under ethical selections from the following respects of professional ethics, interpersonal relations and conjugal relationship. The whole chapter is devoted to the comprehensive analysis of numerous ethical factors that lead to his ethical selections, and further reveals that the wretched marriage based on patient-doctor relationship is the latent cause of most ethical questions and ethical predicaments.Chapter five focuses on Nicole’s rebirth in the aspects of father-daughter relationship and conjugal relationship by making correspondent ethical selections in different ethical predicaments. This chapter involves many ethical dilemmas which brings a lot of mental suffering to Nicole.Chapter six is the ending of the thesis. This part first summarizes the background of creating this work and its position in Fitzgerald’s works. Then it generalizes three protagonists fate changes from the new perspective of ethical selections. By virtue of this research, we gain a deep understanding of Fitzgerald’s legendary life and his ethical thoughts. The analysis of three protagonists’ ethical selections respectively is conducive to helping us make appropriate ethical selections in a world of ethical imbalance and disorder. When making ethical selections, we shall think seriously about ethical essence of objects as well as selector’s ethical identities. The selections in accordance with ethical standards and ethical identities prompt one’s growth.