47 pages 1 hour read

Henry Miller

Tropic of Cancer

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1934

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Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

Henry, feeling like a new life is beginning for him in Paris, uses some money that Collins gave him to rent a cheap room. On the street one day, he is approached by a woman who notices that he speaks English and asks him for money. Annoyed, he gives her fifty francs. He goes to a bar and meets another woman who becomes emotional on the dance floor and says that her child has recently died and she is living with her ill mother. Henry, not believing her story, invites her to spend the night with him. They return to her apartment, where she makes Henry wait in his underwear while checking on her mother repeatedly. When they finally have sex, she urges him to hurry before leaving him alone again. After dressing, he realizes that she robbed him and hid the money in her wardrobe. He takes it back and leaves silently. He sits in a café and wonders whether either of the women he met that night were telling him the truth.

Chapter 12 Summary

At the end of the summer, Henry moves in with Fillmore, and the two spend time with Kruger and Swift. He does freelance travel writing for Carl and lets Swift paint his portrait.