The Role of Place in Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night

Place is thought to have a variety of functions. The most well-known function is that of serving as a background for the event in order to provide the reader with more details and engage him more in the context. The place obtains more importance when it discloses the characters’ features, growth and complexity. This function gives the reader the chance to more deeply comprehend the plot of the story, the characters' relationships or conflict. And more central, the place can exceed the previous functions and play a more crucial role, when it performs roles usually given to the antagonist or the protagonist. This study explores Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night and discusses the significance of the place clarifying how it influences the plot and the characters. Needless to assert, the choice of place to be examined in this research rises from the recurrent concurrences of places in the novel and their parallel to those in Fitzgerald's reality. Another essential end for selecting the places on which the novel centers is that very few critics have investigated the aforesaid correlation between event and place. This gap makes it imperative to start mining deep in the origin of this association. In addition, this paper compares between the various places depicted in the novel and the key events in each of them. It also looks into the similarity between them and the places in Fitzgerald's real life. In giving place a domineering factor in the novel, Fitzgerald perhaps tries to maintain that place is a subjugating authority analogous to fate. Therefore, Fitzgerald takes the art of fiction and readership to newfangled unfamiliar ground. Here perhaps lies Fitzgerald’s chief impact.