Free Tender Is The Night Second Half Qeustions Essay Sample

1. When Dick and Rosemary meet again, where are they and how have things changed? How does their relationship develop through the second half of the book?
Dick’s life has fallen into shambles when he realizes that he is in love with Rosemary, yet trapped by the material comforts that Nicole can provide him. Dick remains optimistic that when he is reunited with Rosemary, things will work out between them. Things do not go well when they meet again, because “Rome was the end of his dream of Rosemary” (Fitzgerald, 326).
Dick’s idea of love for Rosemary is more of a dream of possession. He obsesses over Rosemary when she is removed, and this causes the immediacy of his life to fall apart. When he is finally reunited with Rosemary in Rome, they get together, but Dick gets drunk and then things between them are broken when he punches a police officer and nearly dies in a jail in Rome.
2. What happens when Dick get arrested? Why do you think things turn so ugly so quickly? How do this arrest and Dick’s behavior change the power dynamic between him and Baby Warren? Compare and contrast this incident and Mary North’s later trouble with the law.
Dick is taken to a Roman jail. He is being held, and the authorities are demanding 200 Lire in order for him to be released. Baby Warren receives the news while she is in bed and then rushes to intervene to help him out of his pickle, “She dressed to an accompaniment of anxious heartbeats and ten minutes later stepped out of the elevator inot the dark lobby (Fitzgerald, 336).
Things turned so ugly so ugly so quickly because pressure in Dick had been mounting. He was putting so many stakes in his future with Rosemary, which he was unable to deal with the reality that things were not going to work out as ideally as they did in his head. Before this Baby Warren had always deferred to Dick. With Dick being in mortal trouble and needing Baby Warren to rescue him from his situation, this changes the power balance dynamics between Dick and Baby. Instead of seeing Dick in his smug, polished form, she gets a glimpse of Dick at his worst. “Suddenly from the violet darkness of an archway came Dick’s voice, shouting and screaming” (Fitzgerald, 336).
There is a clear parallelism between this and Mary North’s arrest. Mary North, like Dick, has married into wealth. In some ways, they serve as each other’s foils. Though they had their tension early on, they eventually can become friends instead of remaining incidents. When Dick can repay his good karma in getting bailed out of jail, he opts to forgive Mary and help her.
3. At one point, Franz’s wife says, “I think Nicole is less sick than any one thinks—she only cherishes her illness as an instrument of power. She ought to be in the cinema” (240). Do you agree? What evidence from the text would support this allegation? What would contradict it?
There is a lot of evidence in the text that Nicole’s health is used for power, rather than the result of a legitimate illness. She fits many of the classic symptoms of a hypochondriac. Hypochondriacs fake illnesses in order to avoid having to deal with others. They can excuse themselves from normal situations owing to their illness. Evidence from the text that her illness is made up is that after she decides to take Tommy Barban as a lover, she thinks that she has been “cured.”
However, her mental breakdown after the birth of her son might mean that her illness is real but that its origin is psychological. Nicole’s situation and anxieties might be leading to her having physical symptoms for mental issues.
4. After an agitated fight with their cook Augustine, Nicole tells Dick, “Some of the time I think it’s my fault—I’ve ruined you” (267). Is Dick ruined? Who or what is to blame? What has happened to Dick’s social life and his professional career? Has Nicole prevented him from achieving greatness in his field as a doctor? Why or why not? What ultimately happens to Dick at the end of the novel?
When Dick had to sell his share of his practice, this was a big blow. But Nicole is not to blame for his deficiencies. Nicole is not an easy person. His scandals with Rosemary are his doing and are at the origin of a lot of his troubles with Nicole. His drinking is another source of quite a few of his problems. Some of this might have a genetic origin, but ultimately Dick cannot place the blame of his substance abuse problems on anyone but himself. He leaves for the US when he learns that not only will he and Rosemary not work out, but he has lost any chance with Nicole. Though he is struggling to make his practice flourish in the US, the novels suggest that perhaps he has found peace in one sense. The people who were in his life, helped fuel his problems, and so by no longer being around them in life, he has a chance to escape what was a negative influence on his life, “Oh, you’re so nice. I can’t imagine anybody was not forgiving you anything, no matter what you did to them” (Fitzgerald, 418). In many ways, the novel ends with Dick getting the karma that he deserved.