Tender Is the Night

After the devastation of modern warfare exhibited in the killing fields of World War I (1914-1918), America enjoyed a period of economic prosperity known as the Roaring Twenties. A group of artists and writers rejected 1920s American culture and moved to Europe in search of a more authentic experience of 20th-century life. Many of these expatriate writers and artists were war veterans who were disillusioned with the apparent emptiness of American consumerism. They sought to produce works and experiences which would confront the harsh realities of the new technology-driven and politically tumultuous wasteland of modernity. It was Gertrude Stein who coined the term “Lost Generation” to describe the young men and women who had been impacted by the war; the phrase became famous after Hemingway used her statement as the epigraph to his novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). The term soon became a byword for the World War I generation and its disenchantment with the post-war world.

Tender Is the Night features many themes emblematic of the Lost Generation movement. Its main characters, Dick and Nicole, are American expatriates who spend their lives in Europe. They reject the US while feeling nostalgic for an America they believe no longer exists. Alcohol—prohibited in the US during that time—becomes Dick’s main coping mechanism against the disillusionment that haunts him. Dick and Nicole both struggle with mental wellness and Dick’s ambitions in psychiatric medicine reflect a desire to rehabilitate others after the trauma of the war era. The ultimate failure of Dick’s dreams and the dissolution of his marriage embody the wider sense of loss that permeated American culture after the boom of the 1920s gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s.