s even born. Fitzgerald’s two older sisters died in an epidemic at the ages of one and three, while his mother was pregnant with him. These deaths strengthened the bond between Fitzgerald and his father, who tried to protect his son from his mother’s grief stricken hysteria. This tragedy affects his main character in Tender is the Night. Dick Diver “was born several months after the death of two young sisters and his father, guessing what would be the effect !
             on Dick’s mother, had saved him from a spoiling by becoming his moral guide.” (Meyers 5) After his father’s furniture business failed, the family moved to Buffalo so that he could become a salesman for Procter & Gamble. Upstate New York left a negative impression on Fitzgerald. At the end of Tender is the Night, Dick Diver starts an unsuccessful medical practice in Buffalo, where his father died, and became a drifter. He always associated upstate New York with isolation and failure. In conjunction with his father’s tendency to fail and the way his mother looked down upon his father, the fathers of most Fitzgerald’s f
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