F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” is a story of ambition, ascension, and disappointment. It reveals the hollow reality of the idealistic “American dream” through the societal rise and emotional devastation of Dexter Green. Dexter’s journey to the realization of a boyhood dream turned into a life depleting nightmare serves to prove that the whole construct of social class is an illusion and that money can never buy happiness. At the onset of the story, Dexter is an ambitious middle-class boy and the son of the owner of the “second best grocery store in Black Bear” (Fitzgerald 1). This is significant in of itself because it provides context to Dexter’s ambitious mindset. From the moment Dexter saw the “vital… radiant [and] artificial” (Fitzgerald
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Dexter’s first adult vanity driven decision was to seek the “precarious advantage of attending an older and more famous university in the east” (Fitzgerald 4) despite the financial burden that it put on himself. In this moment (and until the end of the narrative), Dexter was blinded by his pursuit of vanity and perceived elitism, making Fitzgerald’s point that the pursuit of wealth is blinding and illusionary. Soon after graduating college, Dexter begins to accumulate a large sum of wealth from his laundry businesses and takes a big step towards becoming an equal with Judy Jones. It is also during this time that Dexter begins to lose himself. While golfing with the eminent businessman Mr. Hart, who’s “bag he had once carried” (Fitzgerald 5) in his younger years as a caddy, Dexter begins to realize the distance between his boyhood dreams and his new reality, finding himself “glancing at the four caddies who trailed them, trying to catch a gleam or gesture of that would remind him of himself and lessen the gap which laid between his present and his past” (Fitzgerald 5). This occasion alludes to a greater moment of disappointment and realization that in the process of acquiring the wealth and status that dreamt of, he is losing the crux of his …show more content…
Dexter has a moment of insight into the ugly underbelly of the mindset of the upper class when he realizes that Judy never really cared about him, and would never and could never reciprocate the love he felt toward her noting the “utter indifference she manifested and sincerely felt towards him” (Fitzgerald 12). Dexter’s conclusion about Judy Jones, and by extension, about the upper class pointed to the fact that great wealth is emotionally corrupting and can make a person
Dexter’s first adult vanity driven decision was to seek the “precarious advantage of attending an older and more famous university in the east” (Fitzgerald 4) despite the financial burden that it put on himself. In this moment (and until the end of the narrative), Dexter was blinded by his pursuit of vanity and perceived elitism, making Fitzgerald’s point that the pursuit of wealth is blinding and illusionary. Soon after graduating college, Dexter begins to accumulate a large sum of wealth from his laundry businesses and takes a big step towards becoming an equal with Judy Jones. It is also during this time that Dexter begins to lose himself. While golfing with the eminent businessman Mr. Hart, who’s “bag he had once carried” (Fitzgerald 5) in his younger years as a caddy, Dexter begins to realize the distance between his boyhood dreams and his new reality, finding himself “glancing at the four caddies who trailed them, trying to catch a gleam or gesture of that would remind him of himself and lessen the gap which laid between his present and his past” (Fitzgerald 5). This occasion alludes to a greater moment of disappointment and realization that in the process of acquiring the wealth and status that dreamt of, he is losing the crux of his …show more content…
Dexter has a moment of insight into the ugly underbelly of the mindset of the upper class when he realizes that Judy never really cared about him, and would never and could never reciprocate the love he felt toward her noting the “utter indifference she manifested and sincerely felt towards him” (Fitzgerald 12). Dexter’s conclusion about Judy Jones, and by extension, about the upper class pointed to the fact that great wealth is emotionally corrupting and can make a person