Abstract

Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald’ s last semi-autobiographical full-length novel, tells a tragic story of an ambitious young man ending up with self-destruction. The hero Dick in Tender Is the Night is a promising young psychiatrist. Because meeting and marring Nicole who is full of beauty and wealth in the process of treatment, he embarks on catering for high society and loses himself gradually. The story eventually ends up with Nicole’ s abandonment and Dick returns to his hometown alone to work as an ordinary doctor. From the perspective of human nature and on the analysis of Dick’ s tragic fate in historical, social and personal factors, this paper combines with the alienation of human nature caused by materialization in industrial civilization period to discuss a series of problems may exist in the transformation from agricultural society to industrial society, which is a great revelation and reference to China.

Key words: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald; Tender Is the Night; materialization; alienation

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction1

1.1About the author1

1.2About the work2

2 Reasons of Dick’s Tragic Fate..4

2.1 Historical background before 1920s4

2.2 Social influence.5

2.3 Personal factors.8

3 Relationship between industrial civilization and human.10

  3.1 The concept of industrial civilization.10

  3.2 The influence on human nature.11

  3.3 Revelation...13

4 Conclusion.13

References16