Essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dexter

If you find yourself not learning anything from a story at least draw a theme out of it. All literature has a theme, an aspect of human life that the author wants to express through his or her story. The author expresses his or her theme through characters, motivation, plot and so much more. In the story Winter Dream F. Scott Fitzgerald does not fail to do the same, he weaves together characters, emotion, and motivation to express the theme of the story. But I love most how he can lead the reader to extract many themes from his story. Fitzgerald shows how his character strives for an illusion that is doomed for disappointment. Fitzgerald character Dexter doesn't only strive to become part of the "glittering" life but he wants the "glittering things themselves", the best.

In this story Fitzgerald writes about two main characters Dexter Green an ambitious man and Judy Jones an "inexpressibly lovely" girl. First we meet Dexter who is leaving his job as a caddy to pursue his dream of becoming a wealthy and high status man and owning only the best, and then he meets Judy. After a moment between Judy and Dexter, he continues his dream. Fitzgerald revels that now Dexter is a wealthy man he says, "Before he was twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries in his section of the country" (Section 2). Then, again Dexter comes across Judy but this time he notices her more Fitzgerald uses similes to describe how Dexter saw her he writes, " . . . Dexter looked at her closely. . . She was arrestingly beautiful. The color in her cheeks was centered like the color in a picture--it was not a "high" color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth, so shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and disappear. This color and the mobility of her mouth gave a continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate vitality--balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes" (Section 2). Dexter sees Judy as the best, and feels the need to have her because she symbolizes the best. Which led to his obsession of her, he saw her as "a new direction to his life."

Dexter revolves his life around Judy throughout the story Fitzgerald writes, "He was, as he found before the summer ended, one of a varying dozen who circulated about her. . . Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer. Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in what she did" (Section 4). The rejection only pulls him closer to her, when Judy lies about kissing another man Dexter was "glad" that Judy "had taken the trouble to lie to him." Dexter does not realize that he is in a world of illusion, he goes as far as to ask her to marry him but Judy loves her self more than anything and basically answers "nothing." Then "Eighteen months after he met Judy Jones he became engaged to another girl." For eighteen months he lived in a world of illusion pursuing Judy Jones an illusion herself.

Once again Judy comes into his life but this time he hears about her through his colleague Devlin. He learned that Judy Jones has married a drunk, that she has lost her pretty looks, and stays home watching the kids as her husband runs around with other women. Dexter now realizes Judy was just a dream and that the dream was now gone. Fitzgerald describes, "For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had

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