A boy of only five years old had such a strong imagination that he could describe his pony so vividly that his grandmother truly believed he had one, only he actually didn't. He told convincing stories of yachts he dreamed he had, fooling quite a few people. When he entered St. Paul Academy, he was too ambitious and too aggressive (Greenfeld 8-9, 11). He irritated others by continually analyzing them, by his ability to see through them and writing about them. "He talked compulsively and demanded that attention be paid to him, so much so that an article in the school paper asked if there wasn't someone who would poison Scotty or find some means to shut his mouth" (Greenfeld 11). This boy was to be known as Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. During his youth, he dreamed of success and achievement. He would eventually realize that dream through writing novels and short stories based on his own life, but not without its failures. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels illustrate fiction as well as autobiographical facts. Fitzgerald attempted on one hand to imitate his fictional heroes and on the other hand to compensate his personals failures by the creation of imaginary characters. This approach did not seem to have been a winning one for him. The end of his life is an eloquent proof of this statement.
             In 1917, a 21 year old Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton because of his poor grades. Like Dick Diver, the hero of Tender Is the Night, at Yale, "he had gone through [Princeton] almost succeeding, but not quite" (Mizener 59). He then enrolled in the United States army. After failing to become a football hero in college, he was now hoping to show his physical strength by becoming a hero in World War One. Primarily, he had to finish writing the novel he had begun at the time The Romantic Egotist, in case he was not to live through the war (Greenfeld 41). However, he did live through the war. Since his div...