Parallel Themes in Winter Dreams and The Great Gatsby

Winter Dreams, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was written in September 1922 and published on December of the same year. During this period, Fitzgerald was widely known for his short stories. In 1925, Fitzgerald wrote his greatest success and masterpiece The Great Gatsby, which is still known to be one of the most classic pieces of American Fiction. There are many parallels between the two works, which leads readers to think that the Winter Dreams acted like a microcosm to The Great Gatsby. In many cases, the story in Winter Dreams seems to be a precursor to the larger and more cinematic story of Jay Gatsby. There are many similarities between the protagonists of the two works: both come from families from the Midwest, both long to achieve

Dexter fantasizes his life and falls victim to his adolescent dreams that he is never able to fulfill. In his quest to achieve Judy, Dexter never sees more than the outside beauty of Judy, which haunts him for the rest of his life. Judy simply goes towards the direction of wealth. She confesses that she was breaking off relation with another man just because he was not able to support her financially. Dexter is in love with the idea of having Judy as a wife because of her beauty and her social class, which blinds him from the reality of who Judy is. For Dexter, the American Dream is not just about wealth; it is also about acquiring social status to have the ability to marry a woman who is rich. We see the dark side of the American Dream, where even though the main character achieves success, glory, and wealth, he still cannot find true happiness. This is the irony about the American Dream. One would expect that once he or she achieves wealth and success, they would live happily, but for the main characters in the two works, it brings more pain and suffering. Through the use of irony in Winter Dreams, Fitzgerald exposes the shallowness that comes from the pursuit of American Dream. The pursuit of the American Dream makes Dexter blind and prevents him from achieving true happiness. Similarly, Jay Gatsby also deals with identical problems where he is not able to find happiness because of his desire to gain social status and the woman of his dreams proving another area, where Winter Dreams acts as a microcosm of The Great