Tender Is the Night | Topics for Discussion & Projects

Tender Is the Night Key Questions

While many critics and general readers believe that Gatsby takes the palm as Fitzgerald's greatest literary achievement, many others view Tender Is the Night (a title taken from Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," a fact that invites discussion) as the more insightful and fully developed novel. Consideration might be given to a careful comparison of these works, with an eye toward deciding which is indeed the more penetrating vision of the human condition. Also, the novel was published in a revised version in 1948; in this text, the antecedent information is taken from its interjected position and presented entirely, along with the rest of the plot, in chronological order.

Readers might find it instructive to compare these texts, to determine whether the device of antecedent information "works" better than a linear presentation of the plot, or whether the revision was an improvement on the original publication.