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Pages 39-43
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
Henry is back at Tania and Sylvester’s for another dinner party. He reflects on how he’s recently managed to score regular free meals simply by asking his friends directly for them. The idea came to him at a low point, when he had to pawn the wedding ring he’d bought for Mona for money to buy food. He’d never had a chance to give it to her, since when the ship supposed to be carrying her pulled in, she wasn’t on it, and he hasn’t heard from her since. At any rate, the direct requests for food have been working; Cronstadt feeds him well, although Cronstadt’s wife tallies the costs in front of him down to a cent, despite knowing he can never repay them.
In this recollection, Henry finally confirms that Mona was his aforementioned wife. The wedding ring he’d kept on his person after she failed to appear and claim it symbolizes the persistent hold her memory exercises on Henry. His decision to pawn the ring represents a new low of desperation, but it also functions as an important step in letting go of her and moving on.
Themes
At the party, Tania plays the piano, while Henry broods and internally mocks the pretensions of the other guests. He seethes at how the ineffectual Sylvester gets to sleep with his beloved Tania.
Henry’s sexual urges result in jealousy when he’s not able to satisfy them. He habitually holds himself aloof from others, in keeping with his view that art demands loneliness.
Themes
Henry has now apparently burnt some bridges and struggles to get free meals in the same way he’d been doing. He’s living temporarily with some Russians: Olga works in a shoe factory, and Eugene plays the guitar while they eat dinner bought with her earnings, of the vilest food imaginable. Yet the smell of the rancid food also brings enjoyable memories to Henry’s mind, vivid images of Parisian squalor. Henry goes to sleep in an abandoned cinema, drifting into a surreal dream sequence.
Large narrative gaps are standard in Henry’s account of his life, and in this case Henry has found a whole new friend group to live with since the previous scene. His material conditions have taken a serious turn for the worse as his freeloading opportunities have diminished, but he remains enthusiastic about his squalid lifestyle and makes no plan to find work.
Themes
Henry reflects on the writer Papini, who professes to be extremely well-read but later in his books admits that he knows nothing and goes on a hysterical rant against the relentless questions about his art that his acquaintances bring to him. Papini says he is merely a free man who “blow[s] off steam” in his writing, and these kinds of critical inquiries disturb him and impose on his freedom; he needs to be alone. Henry generally agrees with Papini’s rant but tweaks the point to say that what the artist needs is not simply being alone but “loneliness.”
Henry is fascinated by the puncturing of illusions of authority and bloated artistic pretensions, as Papini himself eventually experiences. The idea that “loneliness” rather than being alone is essential for the artist helps to clarify Henry’s willingness to spend much of his time around friends: by cultivating a distance from them and an inner loneliness even while in their presence, he believes that he maintains his artistic integrity.
Themes
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Henry walks around Paris, wishing to go to a movie but too broke to afford a ticket. He admires the cityscape and the coming of spring. Paris, he thinks, can fill one with pride in a way that New York cannot; New York is insurmountably alien to everyone who lives there.
Henry makes one of many positive comparisons of Paris with New York here, although this is perhaps the most straightforwardly admiring. In other cases, he relishes Paris for its coldness and dilapidation.
Themes
