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Pages 1-17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tropic of Cancer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Literature and Artistic Freedom
The United States vs. Europe
Friendship, Loneliness, and Art
Hunger, Sex, and the Human Condition
Summary
Analysis
Back in the present, things are looking up: Henry has apparently been allowed to continue living at the Villa Borghese, and Boris has even hired a new maid, Elsa. Despite Boris’s admonitions not to, Henry quickly seduces Elsa. She then complains about men using her, but Henry’s mind drifts back to the German community in Brooklyn where he lived as a young man, and the sexual experiments and political idealism of those youthful days, when World War I was underway.
Henry’s freeloading continues successfully. The apparent carelessness with which he uses Elsa for sex confirms the callous and selfish image he projects in his narrative ramblings. His recollection of a politically idealistic youth contrasts sharply with the renunciatory attitude he has adopted in the present.
Themes
Henry explains that his present optimism stems from the excitement over feeling his new book develop (becoming “pregnant” with it, as he says). He and Boris believe they are on the cusp of creating “a new Bible,” to be called The Last Book. It will have cataclysmic effects on the world and exhaust the need for new literature for 1,000 years.
Henry’s excitement over a new literary project marks a shift from the rejection of artistic ambitions that he announced earlier, although the project does accord with his desire to radically overturn accepted aesthetic values.
Themes
Henry goes to a dinner party at Tania’s and observes the subtle dynamics and hostility between his friends there. Sylvester, a dramatist, talks of communist ideas and then discourses on one of Borowski’s artworks. Henry reflects on how Paris has always attracted artistic types.
Henry’s cold eye turned on his friends’ interpersonal relationships shows how he holds himself at a distance even from his friends, underscoring his claim that loneliness is necessary to art.
Themes
Back at the Villa Borghese, Henry must continue tiptoeing around while potential renters come to see the apartment. This time, it’s a rich American woman. Henry reflects with contempt on rich Americans and their need for cleanliness. He resents the possibility that at any moment this woman could, by renting the apartment, deprive him of a place to work.
The American obsession with being sanitary is a frequent object of Henry’s scorn. His complaint that he will be denied a workplace comes off as somewhat self-serving, given that he hasn’t evidently produced any work so far in the time he’s been living there for free.
Themes
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Henry returns to his narrative of the party the night before. Moldorf and Sylvester are alternatingly described as one another’s “God.” While Sylvester has a coughing fit upstairs, Moldorf comes on to Tania. He digresses, however, into an account of the letter he received that day from his wife back home, Fanny. She updated him on their children’s schooling and learning to ride bikes. Moldorf recalls her lovingly. Henry begins to imagine Moldorf’s return home, showing Fanny the luxury items he acquired abroad, but Henry’s vision quickly grows dark and surreal—Moldorf’s eyes turn to buttons and his and Fanny’s bed swarms with toads.
As with the earlier passage regarding Moldorf and God, this scene calls into question Henry’s rightness of mind, as well as that of his friends. The disturbing vision he imagines suggests a sense of horror and depravity lurking at the border of everyday life.
Themes
