Tropic of Cancer: Pages 81-134 Summary & Analysis

Henry, fresh from his powerful revelatory experience at the brothel, goes to call on his friend Van Norden. Van Norden sleeps into the afternoons, and Henry has to work to get him out of bed. Van Norden complains about weather of any kind, his job, politics, anything at all; he is always complaining. His teeth are rotting and falling out. Van Norden’s life revolves around sex, and he automatically falls into obscene rants about his recent sexual partners. He prefers tourists to French girls, though he seems to view all of them with a degree of contempt.

Van Norden tells Henry, whom he calls “Joe” (just as Henry calls him Joe as well, as a kind of joke), that he wants to take a walk to get the dirt out of his belly. On their walk, he comments caustically on the women they pass, all of whom he’s apparently slept with at one time or another. He tells vulgar anecdotes about several of them. Van Norden talks of being homesick and seems deeply unsatisfied by the life of constant sex that he lives, yet he promptly makes plans for a sexual rendezvous tomorrow afternoon.

Henry recounts an effort of Carl’s, ongoing for the past six months, to seduce a wealthy woman named Irene by writing letters. Henry has been helping him write the letters and finally the day has arrived to meet her in a hotel. Carl is extremely nervous and Henry has to accompany him almost to the room. He returns to his hotel while Carl’s up there, and he soon receives a call from him, asking for Henry to give their boss an excuse for Carl missing work tomorrow. Irene briefly gets on the phone, and Henry can tell by her voice that she’s beautiful.

At work, Henry delivers an excuse for Carl’s absence to Van Norden, who is apparently his and Carl’s boss. Van Norden doesn’t buy it but wants to get in on whatever scheme Carl is running.

Henry goes to visit Carl the next day, who teasingly withholds his story of the night before, doling it out slowly and indirectly. Carl leaves it unclear whether he and Irene had sex, but he says that they decided to disregard Irene’s husband and elope to Borneo. Irene, however, was worried that Carl would get bored of her. Carl can’t tell or remember if she was beautiful; he eventually decides that she was not and laments that she’s 10 years too old. Nevertheless, he’s now set for another meeting with her in a few days, which distresses him, since he has nothing more to say.

Henry says that he’d happily sleep with Irene for her money, and Carl agrees to try and arrange this. Nevertheless, he chastises Henry for only thinking of the potential material gain and not the dissatisfaction of being stuck with an older woman. He rants at length about this.

The next afternoon, Henry calls on Van Norden, who has also been given the story about Irene from Carl. Van Norden is fuming because he thinks Carl’s entire story was a lie. What bothers him most, though, is how artfully Carl told his lie, filling it with genius literary touches. Van Norden’s extended summary of the story he got from Carl does seem to differ significantly from what Carl told Henry, but Henry pretends that he was told the same thing. Carl’s prurient details drive Van Norden mad not because they’re true but because they’re “possible.”

Henry finally manages to defuse Van Norden from his agitated rant and reminds him that he’s come today to help him move to a new apartment. The building’s maid enters and reminds him that he was supposed to have vacated hours ago. Van Norden treats her with open contempt, though in English, which she can’t understand. Seeing her incomprehension, he takes to miming obscene gestures. Van Norden packs haphazardly and in a hurry, trying to finish a half-empty bottle of Calvados lying around the apartment. He does his best to trash the place out of spite for the landlords, cursing them repeatedly.

Henry and Van Norden pack his belongings shakily into a cab. When they arrive at the new apartment, his items spill everywhere on the street and the landlady is horrified at her new tenant. Entering, they find the building dingy and confining, filled with listless and dejected misfits. They see a woman and baby carriage in the bathroom across the way. Entering the bathroom, reality becomes nightmarish and inexplicable; the baby carriage is now filled with books, which Van Norden carelessly browses, offending the mother. Henry cannot tell if he is dreaming or not. He recalls a recent dream in which Van Norden’s penis, shaped like a broomstick, fell on the sidewalk, after which Van Norden picked it up and slung it over his arms. Back in the present, mirrors are everywhere, and Van Norden’s jaw seems to crumble in pieces to the floor.

The two of them unpack Van Norden’s things and play cards. Van Norden reflects on America’s higher standard of living and then about his desire to “forget himself” as the motive for his womanizing. Van Norden is terrified of being alone; he feels split internally. Orgasms allow him to forget and even annihilate himself for a fleeting moment. He rants about this urge to forget himself and his internal agony, saying he’s considered psychoanalysis but decided not to pursue it. He claims that one day he will write a book that completely lays bare his soul.

Henry smiles at Van Norden’s mention of his book, recalling how he has tried to write it forever but always gets discouraged or waylaid by reading other authors first to make sure no one has broached his ideas before him. He is always satisfied that they haven’t, but this delays him to no end. He uses his theories of poetry and modern art to baffle ignorant potential sexual partners.

Henry reflects on one woman, Bessie, whom Van Norden has been trying to bed for 10 years. They are good friends; she is almost like a female Van Norden, equally sexually profligate. And yet she will not let him sleep with her, saying he has no passion.

Henry accompanies Van Norden on his night off, tired of his endless sexual ranting but eager for a free meal. Despite having his own pocket money, Van Norden endlessly wheedles others for change. At a bar, they run into one of their superiors from the newspaper, who tells them that Peckover has fallen down the elevator shaft and is not expected to live. According to the man, Peckover had awoken at the bottom of the shaft, horribly wounded, yet only focused on groping about for the false teeth which he had finally just been able to afford.

Henry and Van Norden, who don’t like Peckover, resent their superior’s shallow and self-serving attempt to seem affected by Peckover’s imminent death, since the superior cared little about him while alive. Once the man leaves, they hysterically laugh about the incident, considering the element of the false teeth an ironic coup de grace. They cynically revel in the idea that their bosses made Peckover’s life miserable with their proofreading demands and never showed any gratitude until his death.

Late in the night, Van Norden begins ranting about sex again, recalling a recent encounter with a sex worker in which he was shocked to see that she’d shaved her pubic hair. He was grotesquely fascinated and took a flashlight to her genitals to investigate, practically forgetting all about the girl. Van Norden found the raw encounter with female genitalia disillusioning, seeing it as “just a blank” and “absolutely meaningless,” in contrast to the complex fantasies and desires that go into the feeling of sexual attraction.

Just as he’s concluding this speech, Van Norden spots a prostitute and suggests that he and Henry take her up to a room. He reminds Henry of their limited budget and insists that he not get sentimental and try to tip her. Even before she and Van Norden begin, it’s clear that it’s a passionless encounter, but no one has the courage not to proceed. Henry reflects on human cowardice. As Henry watches Van Norden try unsuccessfully to have sex with the prostitute, he feels that he’s watching a machine that has malfunctioned and is now locked in perpetual motion.

A week later, Henry has been promoted to Peckover’s proofreading job. He quickly falls in love with it, becoming fascinated by how the world’s calamities glide indifferently by. It makes him feel immune to everything. None of his companions can understand this positive effect on him. Nevertheless, he feels like God himself, having all the world’s news pass under his fingertips.

Henry feels lucky that he finally found a job like this. He reflects on America, where everyone is thought to be a potential president, versus Europe, where “every man is potentially a zero.” Yet he finds that the total hopelessness of life in Europe accounts for its sweetness. Days and events pass by indifferently here. Henry has found a “world without hope, but no despair.” He wishes Carl and Van Norden could understand this.

Occasionally, Henry receives telegrams from Mona incorrectly promising that she’ll be arriving on the next ship. However, he’s unsure whether he even wants her back. Her American ideas and expectations (of cleanliness, for instance) no longer jibe with his own embrace of squalor and rejection of hope. Henry recalls a recent article comparing cranial capacities of American Indians to those of Black people and Europeans. He’s ultimately unsure what to make of it, but he is sure that Europeans know how to enjoy simple pleasures and not worry about uncleanliness.

Henry goes to the bistro Monsieur Paul’s where newspaper men and prostitutes frequently congregate. He reflects on some of the regular customers there: a pimp named Havas, who always looks happy and whose prostitutes seem to love him—a mutual contentment which enrages Van Norden to see. Another pimp-prostitute couple there frequently fights in the restaurant, but they always make it up. The pimp, clearly, is frequently waylaid by the prostitutes and gambling along the street on the way to the restaurant. Henry internally sympathizes with the pimp, recognizing those allures and speculating on the pimp’s perhaps complex inner life. Henry’s thoughts soon dissolve into a rhapsodic, drunken reverie.

One morning, Henry goes to an exotic plant and animal garden. On the way home, a pregnant prostitute solicits him, prompting him to meditate on the unexpected value the French place on prostitutes with aberrations and deformities, as an added “spice” for the “jaded appetites of the male” of today.

Later that afternoon, Henry goes to an art gallery and has a shocking, overwhelming encounter with a painting by Matisse. He feels that “the habitual gray of the world is rent asunder and the color of life splashes forth in song and poem.” He rhapsodizes at great length about this earth-shattering encounter. Matisse, he feels, is the central figure in some kind of cosmic cataclysm or worldwide revolution in consciousness. He sees Matisse as the hub of a giant wheel that dissolves as it rolls downhill, while he himself remains intact.