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Pages 209-231
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
In the spring, Henry receives a telegram from Carl offering him a place to stay in Paris and train fare to return. Henry accepts at once, leaving Dijon without even saying goodbye to anyone. He finds Carl living in as sordid a state as ever. Carl tells him of his recent troubles with a girlfriend: she turned out to be 15 years old, and her enraged parents arrived one day to retrieve her. Carl’s open copy of Goethe’s Faust was the only thing that mollified her father. A different girl, a prostitute, is in Carl’s bed at the moment, and Henry decides to sleep with her.
Much as Van Norden used obscure literary references to dazzle potential sexual partners, Carl finds that his volumes of literary classics conveniently extricate him from a serious situation. In the lives of the novel’s characters, literature functions as a means to impress others and get one’s way as much as anything.
Themes
The next day, Henry, Carl, and Van Norden are back in their old routine, walking around and complaining. Van Norden mentions that Fillmore’s in the hospital. Henry goes to visit him, and Fillmore tells the story of how he impregnated his girlfriend Ginette, with whom he would frequently fight, and now he’s being suspected as crazy and syphilitic and being held in the hospital. Fillmore feels guilty and wants to marry her when he gets out. Henry doesn’t think he’s crazy.
Fillmore’s difficult situation recalls the ominous lines in Henry’s passage about them leaving Le Havre, in which he said Fillmore would suffer in a way none of them could predict.
Themes
Henry goes to meet Ginette, who drinks heavily and grows emotionally erratic. She wants to have Fillmore’s child, even though her syphilis may mean it’ll be born blind. She acknowledges that she and Fillmore often physically fought. Her friend Yvette drops by, who claims to work for the police, although Henry doubts it.
Ginette seems like a tough person to get stuck with. The poor decisions that led Fillmore to this point recall his poor judgment regarding Macha, in his refusal to give up pursuing her despite her obvious personal problems.
Themes
The next day, Fillmore is moved to a remote country hospital that costs less. Over the following weeks, Fillmore seems to get worse: his teeth and hair fall out, and he tells Ginette directly that he does not intend to marry her. Despite this, Ginette remains hopeful of his recovery. Her parents arrive and it becomes clear that they are hoping to marry off their daughter, who has few prospects, to a man with wealthy parents like Fillmore. Yvette one day drunkenly tells Henry and Carl that Ginette is lying; she’s not pregnant, she’s merely trying to trap Fillmore in marriage. Henry does not tell Fillmore this in time to stop his publicized engagement to Ginette immediately upon his release.
Like Van Norden and Peckover before him, Fillmore too now falls victim to tooth rot, signaling his loss of the vitality that once defined him. His ultimate submission to his shame and the pressure to marry Ginette indicate that he has a greater sense of decency than one might have expected; it’s hard to imagine Henry, Carl, or Van Norden caving to that pressure.
Themes
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Fillmore privately laments to Henry his dread at the approaching marriage. Henry tries to convince him to flee, telling him what Yvette had said about Ginette lying, but Fillmore doesn’t believe it—he had been sleeping with Yvette as well previously, and now she’s just jealous.
Again, Fillmore’s poor decision-making and lack of control over his sexual appetite have gotten him into a lamentable situation.
Themes
Out to lunch with Henry, Fillmore and Ginette have a spat that turns into a fierce exchange of blows. The manager kicks them out, and they continue verbally sparring for several blocks, drawing a large and horrified crowd. Suddenly, however, they reconcile, for the moment at least. The next day, however, Ginette has torn all Fillmore’s clothes to ribbons. This level of fighting continues for weeks.
This dramatic public fight recalls the fight between Jimmie and his wife in Le Havre. Henry fully supports Fillmore and has nothing but contempt for Ginette, so he seems unbothered by Fillmore’s wife-beating, though it does draw an uncharacteristic condemnation from passersby, who for most of the novel are depicted as being as unhinged as the main characters.
Themes
Henry sees Fillmore going to the bank one day; he’s kept under tight watch and has been given a mere half hour for his errand. The Ginette situation has him at his wit’s end. He complains that the French are not all he thought them to be; he’s sick of it here and realizes he’ll always be an American. When he and Henry get a drink, he admits that what he really wants is to be home again and hear English spoken. Henry internally finds this cowardly but fully supports him.
Like many of Henry’s friends at different points in the novel, including Collins, Fillmore too now expresses his desire to return to the United States. Henry is by this point perhaps alone among the novel’s main characters for remaining resolute in his self-exile and commitment to France, although he does still frequently think about the United States.
Themes
Henry spontaneously hatches a plan to take Fillmore to the bank immediately, withdraw all his money, and put him on a train to London, from where he can sail home to America. Fillmore’s a nervous wreck, but Henry pushes him through it every step of the way. They have a nice meal while waiting for the British consulate to open and then sort out his papers. Henry holds on to the 2,500 francs they forgot to exchange, promising a guilt-ridden Fillmore to return it to Ginette even though he doesn’t think she deserves it.
Henry’s eagerness to help his friends in times of need receives its clearest expression here, as he promptly conceives of a plan that can save Fillmore from his terrible fate, giving no thought to the fact that he too will likely never get to see Fillmore again.
Themes
Henry ensures that Fillmore boards the train, and then he tears up the note for Ginette entrusted to him and pockets the money. Overjoyed at his financial windfall and the beautiful day, Henry hires a cab to take him all around the city. He savors the reckless pleasure of having a lot of cash in hand, although he knows that it will never make any profound changes in the world.
Henry’s actions here recall his retrieval of his money from the prostitute’s drawer, and the scene on the whole recalls the sequence when he returns from Le Havre flush with Collins’s cash. Because he has accepted the unambitious French lifestyle, he can enjoy the simple pleasure of having cash in hand without concern for the future.
Themes
Henry stops at a beer garden along the Seine River and reflects. He realizes that with the money, he too could return to America if he wished. He recalls watching the New York skyline recede the last time he left, and he wonders vaguely what ever happened to Mona. His thoughts drift to the soil around him and the eons through which man has inhabited it. A profound peace comes over him as he feels the Seine flowing through him.
This final renunciation of America coincides with Henry’s final renunciation of Mona, indicating Henry’s liberation from his roots. This freedom allows him to be claimed by new roots, the French soil into which he feels himself sink. His final sensation of merging with the Seine recalls his earlier exaltation of “everything that flows.”
Themes
