Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald

989 Words2 Pages

The story of “Winter Dreams” begins with a boy named Dexter Green, who was just a simple golf caddie at simply the age of fourteen. Throughout the story he becomes quite a success financially and was able to live a more prestigious lifestyle than he did in his earlier childhood. Through Fitzgerald’s short story, “Winter Dreams”, Dexter envisioned that economic success and seeking the possession of the unattainable would lead to happiness, but it would eventually lead to disarray and unhappiness.
One of Fitzgerald’s main themes to this story is how the changing of the seasons reflects the change of attitude we have on life and our personal mood. Dexter’s profession at the beginning of the story was a golf caddie. He spent the majority of his time underneath sun and surrounded by the shear beauty of nature. The happiest moments of Dexter’s life were when the game of golf was being played in the warm summer months. Dexter did not like the winter, and Fitzgerald represents this by saying, “At these times the country gave him a feeling of profound melancholy-it offended him that the links should lie in dreary, too, that on the tees where the gay colors fluttered in summer there were now only the desolate sand-boxes knee-deep in crusted ice (1830). The imagination of the snow melting into Lake Erminie gave Dexter a sense of ease and comfortableness that no other season would give him (Fitzgerald 1830).
In the harshest of times and the harshest seasons, Dexter would dream about the summer and what happiness it brought him. The summer was seen to him as an opportunity and a reminder of some of his most cherished moments. The winter dream became Dexter’s dream of summer months, and this often dictated his life decisions (Fitzger...

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...ng this unattainable reality. The happiest time of his life was the beginning when he spent his days on the golf course in the summer months as a caddy. Once started to have his winter dreams, he never looked back on the past until it was too late. When the story unravels at the end, Dexter unveils his true emotions about how his life never found purpose or fulfillment. He often believed that purpose and fulfillment would be found in material possessions and the people he was with. Throughout the short story, “Winter Dreams”, Dexter anticipated that financial stability and attaining the unattainable would lead to contentment, but it would eventually lead to the destruction of his life.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Winter Dreams." McMichael, George L., and J. S. Leonard. Concise Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Longman, 2010. 1830-1845. Print.

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