Tender is the Night Book Notes Summary

Meeting up with the rest of the group, Dick pointed to a plain and told Rosemary that that land cost twenty lives a foot in the summer of the war. Rosemary was so engrossed in Dick that she would have believed anything he said. Her love had reached a point where she was beginning to be unhappy and desperate. She didn't know what to do and wanted to talk to her mother.

Topic Tracking: Love 7

Dick continued on about the land they were walking past and gave details about certain areas and the war. He and Abe pursued the conversation about the war and threw stones at each other. They soon came to a memorial to the Newfoundland dead and Rosemary burst into tears. Like most women, she liked to be told how she should feel, and liked when Dick told her that she should be sad. After that, they got in the car and headed back to Amiens.

On the way, they passed a sea of graves, and Dick saw the same girl they had previously met on the train, holding the same wreath as before. He asked the chauffeur to stop, and went to speak to her. She was a red-haired girl from Tennessee who had come to lay a memorial on her brother's grave. She was crying, as she believed the War Department had given her the wrong number, as the grave had a different name on it. Dick advised her to lay it on any grave without looking at the name, and told her that that was what her brother would have probably wanted her to do. She did that, and accepted Dick's offer to ride back with them to Amiens. Rosemary cried when she heard of this mishap. It was dark by the time they got to the train station, and the Tennessee girl seemed to have forgotten her sorrows, and was flirting with Dick and Abe, who teased her gently. As they ate sandwiches on the train ride back to Paris, Nicole, biting her lip, was reading the war books Dick had brought along. "Indeed, he had made a quick study of the whole affair, simplifying it always until it bore a faint resemblance to one of his own parties." Book 1, Chapter 13, pg. 59