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Pages 30-38
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
Easter has arrived, and Henry again enjoys walking through the Parisian streets. As is his habit, he goes to the American Express office, and as always, he has received no mail or money. He runs into an art historian acquaintance and wonders about his experience of the world. Henry feels optimistic. Carl, though, has been out of sorts lately and talks frequently of returning to America. Henry reflects how Europe has a way of making one rot and become lazy. Henry recounts Carl’s pretensions and artistic torments. In contrast, Henry himself feels that he’s left that kind of thing behind and feels happy in the abandonment of worries or ambitions.
Henry once again highlights his own abandonment of self-delusion by contrasting himself with Carl. Carl was, however, one of only two of Henry’s friends (along with Boris) whom he singled out earlier as genuinely impressing him with their literary talent. Nevertheless, Henry feels he has moved beyond the typically American obsession with productivity that still eats away at Carl, embracing the comfort of a life without ambition.
Themes
On Carl’s day off, he and Henry run into their friend Marlowe, who’s been on a five-day bender. Carl is well accustomed to Marlowe’s various lies to get free drinks, but he indulges him anyway. Marlowe reveals that he somehow has been tipped off that Carl will lose his job. Marlowe tells a distraught Carl that he should take over the literary review Marlowe runs, since he’s returning to San Francisco. Marlowe passes out drunk on the street, and Carl convinces Henry to get in with him on the literary review, deviously plotting to ruin it with their obscene writings. They return with Marlowe to Carl’s apartment, kicking out a woman who’d been waiting in bed for him. Van Norden soon comes by and the four of them spend the night in Carl’s bed. In the morning, Marlowe goes with Van Norden to help find his lost false teeth.
Yet another of the expatriates in Henry’s circle has announced his intention to return to the United States, conjuring the sense that their bohemian community of self-exiled artists may be on the decline. The scene further contributes to the atmosphere of randomness and self-destruction that permeates the novel. Van Norden’s false teeth foreshadow the episode with Peckover’s false teeth later in the novel, adding to the impression of a moribund and feeble society.
Themes
