Modernity and Degeneration in Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night: A Freudian Reading

• Main Authors: Huang Hsiang-yu, 黃湘瑀
• Other Authors: Jerome F. Keating
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04779573711958654896

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 95 === Depicting a psychiatrist’s downfall in a material world, Tender Is the Night discusses many issues that a modern society will encounter, and Fitzgerald especially puts emphasis on the rich people’s world. With so many dangers and contradictions within it, Fitzgerald himself cannot resist describing the fatal attraction which the upper class experiences. He not only depicts the extravagant lifestyles that his characters live, Fitzgerald also reveals the dark side of the material world. Adopting relevant cultural backgrounds, the thesis first examines the quick advance and bloom of technology and industries after the war; because of losing faith, people advocate the freedom from constraints. Moreover, with trauma brought along with the war and the overly fast speed modernity, the traditional values are gone. Dick Diver and other characters face many social and psychological conflicts and problems. Chapter two starts from Freud’s theory of id, ego, and superego and then goes to other expanded ideas to discuss the immoral issues and phenomena in the novel. Living in a changing and affluent society with the disappearance of morality, Dick and others have to face the inevitable task of survival, a survival that favors those culturally designated to roles of the childlike id. Survival which greatly depends on the individual has been always an important subject for human beings. Finally, since psychology is used to analyze human inner world, there is a more thorough observation of characters’ inner thoughts and their performing acts. Living in a luxurious and dissolute world without losing oneself is a difficult challenge, and many people cannot make it. It is only self-worth and justifiable selfishness that can help one survive since only the fittest survive. Apparently, in Fitzgerald’s work the women prove more adept at surviving than the men.