菲茨杰拉德|Tender is the Night 夜色温柔

In Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald explores many of the same themes and concepts present in his renowned novel, The Great Gatsby. Both stories depict the lives of wealthy Americans during the 1920s, a decade of great economic prosperity. The stories’ respective protagonists—Dick Diver and Jay Gatsby—are also intriguingly similar. Both men embody charm, promise, and the American dream, throw reckless and decadent parties, and possess a powerful magnetism that draws others towards them. Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby are complex romance stories that reveal the illusionary nature of the Jazz Age—an era that promised magnificent opportunities, but ultimately led to the destruction of downfall of many American men. Ernest Hemmingway, a friend of Fitzgerald’s, wrote The Sun Also Rises in 1926. It, too, is a romance story about expatriates living in Paris during the 1920s and depicts the tragedy of a generation destroyed by their own reckless decadence. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s novel Save me the Waltz also captures both the glittering essence of the Jazz Age and the trauma that haunted it. Finally, although very distinct stylistically, parallels can be drawn between Tender is the Night and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita due to their portrayals of troubling love affairs between older men and much younger girls. While the exploitation is much more disturbing and pronounced in Lolita—the girl is only 12 years old, and her stepfather is the abuser—Fitzgerald’s romanticization of Dick and Rosemary’s relationship is also unsettling for a modern audience.