A Fallen World: On The Alienation In Tender Is The Night

It takes Fitzgerald ten years to complete his last novel Tender Is the Night. The novel has been severely criticized since its publication. The loose structure and the messy plots make the novel lose strong readability for readers, while the thought and value presented by the novel lack enough breadth and depth for critics. However, through the test of time, the novel won the affirmation twenty years after the author's death. Many critics regard this novel as his most wonderful novel, even one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. As one of America's most famous novelists in the twentieth century, Fitzgerald combines his novel with his time. He portrays the joys and sorrows of a generation with his literary talents and writing skills, showing us a world truer than real life. Many comments are focused on the analysis of the characters in the novel, some from the perspective of psychological analysis, and some from the perspective of feminism. This thesis intends to reveal the profound meaning that the characters have been endowed with in the work based on Fromm's alienation theory.This thesis is composed of three parts: the introduction, the body part and the conclusion. The introduction mainly introduces the position of Fitzgerald and his works in the history of American literature, domestic and international researches on Tender Is the Night, as well as the argument, the layout and the significance of this thesis. The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters to discuss respectively the alienation in Tender Is the Night: the hero Dick's self-alienation, mainly for his strong female temperament and some degree of madness; the alienation between people, mainly for morbid love, loveless marriage, apathetic family bond and spoiled friendship; the alienation of the relationship between man and substance in the field of consumption, which is mainly manifested in that consumption is no longer a means to achieve happiness, but becomes the purpose itself, and people can't enjoy the leisure time actively and freely, for they are controlled by the tastes of the upper class. The conclusion summarizes the major points discussed before. The thesis tries to prove that alienation has permeated the whole Western world through the description of the alienation in the fields of human relations and consumption. No matter the protagonist or other characters in Tender Is the Night are infected with the common failing of the era without exception. That is, alienation. At the same time, it is also a warning to the people in modern times that alienation could be everywhere at any time. Although Fromm has analyzed the reason of alienation and put forward the solution, people still need to think about the way to resist and eliminate alienation in reading literary works.