The protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night is Dick Diver. He is a promising American psychiatrist whose professional confidence and personal stability gradually deteriorate during the novel. Set mainly on the French Riviera and in Europe, the story follows Dick’s marriage to Nicole Warren, a wealthy patient whose recovery is closely tied to their complicated relationship.
Fitzgerald published the novel on April 12, 1934, making it his fourth and final completed novel. Its title comes from John Keats’s poem “Ode to a Nightingale,” and its atmosphere reflects the fading glamour of the Jazz Age among wealthy American expatriates.
Readers sometimes confuse Dick Diver with Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of Fitzgerald’s earlier 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. Dick is also not simply a glamorous socialite: he begins as a gifted doctor but becomes increasingly damaged by alcoholism, emotional exhaustion, and the pressures of treating Nicole as both patient and wife. The novel’s central arc is therefore Dick’s rise and fall, while Nicole ultimately achieves greater independence.