47 pages • 1 hour read
Henry MillerTropic of Cancer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1934A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
At the beginning of January, Henry takes a non-paying position as an exchange professor of English in the town of Dijon. At dawn on his last day in Paris, he and Fillmore go to Mass after drinking all night, and he describes the religious event as being “fascinating and stupefying at the same time” (261). When they attempt to leave by the wrong exit, a priest throws them out and they laugh at him. On the way to Dijon, Henry remembers an experience he had while homeless in Florida, in which both a rabbi and a priest refused to help him, and he saw the priest in a limousine later the same day. The inherent cruelty of this contrast, he understands, epitomizes the American attitude towards poverty.
When he arrives in Dijon, Henry immediately realizes that he has made a mistake. He does not like the provincial town and hates the bureaucratic hierarchy of the school. The students look like prisoners on a chain gang and the buildings themselves look clinical and unfriendly. He describes the other professors, but adds that with the exception of one, they were all unremarkable people who have faded from his memory. His students are equally forgettable, and he remarks frequently upon their lack of education. Feeling increasingly stir-crazy, he begins spending time at the local brothels and goes for long walks around the town, but sees himself as “a walking ghost” (281) isolated from those around him. Alone in his room, he must face his own worst memories, fears, and impulses. The night watchman is the only person with whom Henry enjoys interacting, and he notes in particular the man’s persistent smile.
Chapter 15 Summary
When spring arrives, Henry leaves the school without notice and returns to Paris to live with Carl. The room is small and dirty, but Henry feels like he has escaped prison and his life is exactly as it once was. He hears that Fillmore is in a mental hospital and eventually learns what transpired while he was in Dijon. Fillmore began a relationship with a girl named Ginette, inadvertently giving her gonorrhea and impregnating her. Ginette’s parents disapprove of Fillmore but are still pressuring the two to marry. Henry meets Ginette, along with her friend Yvette, and Ginette insists on carrying the baby to term. In an attempt to keep tabs on Fillmore, she removes him from the mental hospital and arranges for him to stay in her family’s country house. He soon declares that he will not marry her and if she wants to give birth to the child, she can raise it herself. Meanwhile, Yvette tells Carl that Ginette is not and never was pregnant, although Fillmore disputes this.
After seeing Fillmore and Ginette get into a violent, public fight, Henry decides to help Fillmore escape Paris and return to America. They visit the bank together, and Henry forces Fillmore to board a train for London. He then takes a taxi through Paris alone, enjoying the sights and wondering if he will ever return to America. Feeling peaceful, he watches the Seine and reflects on the fixedness of its course.
Chapters 14-15 Analysis
As winter arrives in Paris, Henry becomes as directly engaged with geopolitics as he ever will be in the novel, for his new teaching job in Dijon is part of a “Franco-American amity arrangement” (259). We learn little else about this arrangement, which on its own suggests that Henry himself is not very interested in the political dynamics between France and America and how those dynamics are at play in educational institutions. However, he openly criticizes almost everything about the school itself, frequently using language that implies he is quite literally in Hell. In Dijon, he says, the seasons grind to a halt, everyone walking around the city is actually a ghost (another example of life and death being merged), and he lives within “cold walls of human malevolence” (282). His frequent references to the center of the earth recall Dante’s famous literary journey into Hell, and when he is left alone in his room, he feels himself disappear, pulled into “the beyond” (287). Dijon is thus a major part of the novel’s use of religious imagery, which increases as the story nears its end.
Henry’s experience at the church with Fillmore is the other side of the religious coin these chapters offer. Here, they are not in either Heaven or Hell, but are instead comical characters playing bit roles in someone else’s serious dramatic performance. When Henry speculates about what the priest is blessing—including “the country” and “the ruler”—he brings his own secular cynicism into a permeable, if powerful, institution (261). His and Fillmore’s inability to locate the correct exit reflects their general confusion about how to navigate traditional social structures, but the fact that they are able to run away triumphantly speaks to the novel’s belief about the lack of value those structures ultimately offer.
The end of Tropic of Cancer has received a great deal of critical attention, largely because of how ambiguous it is about Henry’s future. In the last chapter, he takes charge of Fillmore’s life, virtually forcing his friend to leave Paris and abandon his abusive wife. However, in the last two lines of the book, Henry reflects on the fixed nature of the Seine’s course; he says he can feel everything about the river (“its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate”) (318) flowing through him. These contemplations raise questions about the novel’s perspective on desire, agency, and control. Does Henry want to leave Paris? If so, will he be able to, or is his course also fixed?
Also baffling to readers and critics alike is Henry’s declaration on the last page that human beings are “strange fauna and flora” who “need to be surrounded with sufficient space” (318). This claim seems to contradict Henry’s own experiences within his narrative, for when he has left Paris, and has subsequently gotten more space, he seems miserable and returns to the city as quickly as possible. Thus, his use of the word “space” has become the subject of much debate. What does he mean by “space” in this instance? How is his concept of “space” related to other philosophical notions, including time, death, and life?
