47 pages • 1 hour read
Henry MillerTropic of Cancer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1934A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source text contains depictions of antisemitism, anti-Black, anti-Chinese, and anti-Indian/anti-Hindu stereotypes and language. It also contains depictions of misogynistic language, domestic abuse, and alcohol abuse.
Henry is living at the Villa Borghese with his friend Boris. At this point, he has been living in Paris for two years, and although he has no money and his home is filthy, he is happy because he is finally an artist. His lover Tania is the reason he is writing this story. Tania is married to Sylvester, another of Henry’s friends. In a series of disconnected contemplations, he thinks about the penis size of various animals and lists the Jewish people he knows, concluding that he would convert to Judaism for Tania.
Henry describes his friends Van Norden and Moldorf, the former of whom he labels “cunt-struck” and the latter of whom is “word drunk” (4). He then describes Tania’s body in great detail, imagining what it would be like to have sex with her in front of Sylvester. He compares Tania to two other women, Irène and Llona, focusing on their genitals and sexual habits. He then describes Moldorf in greater detail, calling him “clown, juggler, contortionist, priest, lecher, mountebank […] Moldorf is God” (8). The men’s friendship is largely motivated by a shared love of literature, but Moldorf seems to have trouble writing. Henry claims he has no wish to write anything perfect.
Henry and Boris are forced to leave the Villa Borghese when it is rented out to someone else, and they have some awkward interactions with potential new tenants. Henry recounts his first days in Paris in 1928, when he was “a bewildered, poverty-stricken individual” (15), recalling a wild night with his wife Mona before she returned to America and another night after she eventually returned. On both nights, they stayed in the same filthy hotel room, poor but deeply in love.
Chapter 2 Summary
Henry and Boris are still living at the Villa Borghese, but they are now living with a German maid named Elsa. Elsa is a musician who frequently cries over her poor luck with men and plays sentimental music that Henry doesn’t like. He reflects on German literature and philosophy as well as Germany’s role in World War I.
Henry then describes “the book that has begun to grow inside [him]” (26). He and Boris are planning to create “a new cosmogony of literature,” (26) something that will become part of world mythology, and this new book will be the starting point.
Henry then goes to Tania and Sylvester’s house for dinner, where he senses Tania’s hostility towards him and Sylvester’s enthusiasm about his book. Boris and another friend, Cronstadt, eventually show up, and Henry enjoys the chaotic interactions among them all.
More potential tenants, including a beautiful American woman, come to look at the Villa Borghese, and Henry becomes anxious that someone rich will rent the apartment and he will have nowhere to work. He spends another evening with Sylvester, Tania, and Moldorf, and Moldorf tells Tania he is falling in love with her because she reminds him of his wife, Fanny. Moldorf describes Fanny and their sons in glowing terms, and Henry has an imaginative vision of Fanny as a rotund, slippery giant and Moldorf hopping around her like a toad, eventually crawling inside her and tickling her.
Chapter 3 Summary
Having worn out his welcome with many of his friends, Henry roams Paris in search of a meal, making various observations about the city. He recalls meeting a sex worker named Germaine, who was different from many other sex workers that he had met. The most remarkable thing about her was the way she valued her body, particularly her vagina, which in Henry’s words “was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a magic, potent treasure, a God-given thing” (43). This had a profound effect on Henry, who continued a friendly relationship with Germaine even after she realized that he was perpetually poor.
Henry then remembers another sex worker, Claude, with whom he once thought he might have fallen in love. Unlike Germaine, Claude did not enjoy being a sex worker and had an aura of shyness and sadness about her. Henry recalls feeling angry towards her, exclaiming, “Who wants a delicate whore!” (47).
Chapter 4 Summary
Spring arrives in Paris and Henry still feels excited about his new book. He spends time with his friend Carl, who is disgusted by Henry’s optimism and sees it as an unhealthy American trait. The men run into another friend, Marlowe, who is on a five-day bender. Like Henry, Marlowe is American and an aspiring writer, but he is having a significantly more difficult time surviving in Paris. Later in the evening, he says that he will return to San Francisco and asks Carl and Henry to take over his literary magazine. After Marlowe passes out, Carl suggests that they do as Marlowe asks and surreptitiously fill the magazine with their own work.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
In these chapters, Miller situates the narrative in its literary, historical, and geographical contexts. In an example of a metanarrative, or self-aware story, Henry emphasizes that he is writing a book and that Tropic of Cancer is indeed that book; thus, the reader is actively watching Henry unspool his tale. He describes his life as an impoverished writer in Paris, emphasizing the filth of the city and the instability of his living situation, and introduces several characters, including Boris, Tania, Sylvester, Moldorf, Marlowe, and Carl. He also introduces his estranged wife, Mona, in an extended flashback. While none of these characters are fully developed, Henry highlights their many unnatural or impossible quirks and eccentricities and uses them to develop the surreal, fantastical elements of the novel’s tone and setting.
Henry’s descriptions of Germaine and Claude set the tone for the novel’s engagement with female sexuality. By contrasting the women’s approaches to sex work, men’s bodies, and their own bodies, he establishes a binary for his female characters: those who are “good” at being sexual and those who are “bad” at it. He also introduces the question of whether certain sexual behaviors and feelings about sex are inherent or whether these can be influenced over time by social and cultural factors, a guiding concept that will remain prominent throughout the rest of the narrative.
Another binary relationship developed in this part of the novel is that of America and Europe (specifically France), although it is unclear at this point exactly how Henry feels about his own place in this dynamic. Through Carl, he hates American optimism (it is “disgusting”), (49) but also implies that Americans are naturally more straightforward and honest than Europeans. Henry’s ambivalence about his place in the world lays the groundwork for many of the novel’s broader critiques about literature, art, religion, politics, capitalism, and sex on both sides of the Atlantic.
This section of the novel also sees Henry struggling to decide what kind of writer he wants to be and how to develop what he calls “a new cosmogony of literature” (26). This is the first explicit reference to the novel’s philosophical vision, and when Henry describes the book that he hopes to write as “a new Bible—The Last Book,” he sets himself up as a pseudo-religious figure dedicated to sharing his visions with his readers (26). However, he also feels a sense of competition with the aspiring artists around him and becomes increasingly aware that the literary world is not immune to corruption and deception. This attitude is most apparent when Carl suggests that they take over Marlowe’s literary magazine and secretly include only their own works, a plan that Henry never pursues and that ultimately dies by the wayside.
