Aspiration And Disillusion:A New Historical Interpretation Of Tender Is The Night

As a novel to which Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald devoted a decade of labor and energy, Tender Is the Night is often read and viewed as the author’s autobiography, recording his life struggles and marital nightmare with elaborately designed structure and shifting points of view. This research attempts to observe the texts of the novel from new historicism standpoint with a focus on character and event, so as to reveal the interrelations between text and history, to decode the power mechanism hidden in its thematic guise and to provide critics and readers with a fresh interpretation of the novel. On one hand, historical background implied in the novel is the product of specific historical stage, which is the manifestation of “Historicity of Texts”. Meanwhile, texts is not the objective representation of historical reality but instead the active construction of history. This process, which is restricted by both power and ideology, is called “Textuality of History”. The shifting points of view and the influence of advertisement and Hollywood are exactly the evidence of this process through which an interrelated relationship is formed between history and text. On the other hand, the fate of Dick Diver, the protagonist of Tender Is the Night, signifies the mode of power mechanism: the apparent opportunity for aliento subvert power by maintaining individualityis actually a trap set by power in order to provide a channel for the alien to release dissatisfaction; the power is consequently and eventually consolidated through containment and marginalization of the subversive forces.