Winter dreams what is irene like

Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. Both she and her family are pleased with the engagement, which Dexter breaks off after sleeping with Judy. Though Irene is honorable, she is unexciting and Dexter feels that, while she offers security and domestic satisfaction, he does not feel for her the passion that he feels for Judy.

For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:. Section 3 Quotes. Related Themes: Gender and Ambition. Explanation and Analysis:. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Section 3. The following fall, when Dexter is twenty-five, he becomes engaged to Irene Scheerer, a nice, honorable young woman who is less attractive than Judy.

Dexter feels no Instead, he talks with Irene about books and music. The " winter dreams " symbolize his hopes of success, which vary and change. Often they are too brief and disappointing.

Thus, the title " Winter Dreams " is symbolic of Dexter Green's future ambitions that are never realized, but which occupy his mind. Dexter first meets Judy when she is eleven and he 14 at the golf course where he is a caddy. Who are the main characters in Winter Dreams? Category: books and literature fiction. Dexter Green - A successful businessman and the story's protagonist. Hedrick - A pillar of the community. How does Dexter disappointed Irene?

What does that old pennies worth of happiness? How does Dexter feel about Irene? What does Judy symbolize in Winter Dreams? Why is Judy Jones usually referred to by her first and last name? What month do Dexter and Irene become engaged? What traits do Judy and Dexter share? How does Judy use her physical attractiveness? What is the tone of winter dreams? What is the setting of winter dreams?

What does Judy want in her life? What did Dexter lose in Winter Dreams? Do you feel sorry for Judy for Dexter explain? What happens to Dexter and Judy's engagement in Winter Dreams? What effect does Judy's changing personality have on Dexter in Winter Dreams? What do the Winter Dreams referenced in the the story refer to? She is the mother of Irene. She is very kind and likes Dexter. She is deeply hurt when Dexter betrays her daughter.

He is a successful businessman and admires the passion and work ethic of Dexter. He is a member of the golf club. He plays a golf game with Dexter when he is twenty years old. He is also attracted to the beauty of Judy Jones. The title of the story refers to the winter dreams that Dexter embodies. Even though Dexter attains great success and becomes a successful businessman, he pays a great price for it.

The social mobility that Dexter attains as a result of wealth, it heavily restricts his capacity for happiness. Dexter comes from a humble background. His father was the owner of a grocery store, and his mother was an immigrant who consistently struggles with the language. The story revolves around the central irony that the realization of the American Dream produces unwelcoming rewards. For instance, when Dexter is a teenager and works as a caddy, he dreams of attaining success and happiness that money will bring.

He dreams of defeating Hedrick in a golf match. However, when he finally defeats him, he does not feel much happiness. Dexter has crossed the middle-class inertia. However, he cannot buy happiness with the money that he tirelessly earns. Dexter appears to have an unclear relationship with the rich people and the blueblood that reside in his social world. He feels proud of himself and his self-made status and does not respect those who are both with the silver spoon in their mouth.

However, Dexter wants to be a part of the world to which these men belong. His pursuit of Judy is not only because he loves her but also wants to attain the social status that comes with her. Even though Dexter attains great success, and he feels himself to be a novel, more praiseworthy, and stringer version of the world of Mortimer Jones, he still imitates the appearance and gestures of the rich.

Dexter pays lots of attention to his appearance. He is so concerned with small details that only an outsider who is disguised as a wealthy man can notice. The status and position of Dextress in this world is at risk. He does not have any room for error in etiquette and appearance.

Fitzgerald tries to expose the hollowness and emptiness that comes when a person tries to pursue the American Dream aggressively. Through Dexter and the world that he represents, Fitzgerald shows that choosing wealth and social status as a substitute for strong connections to people eclipse the possibility of emotional fulfillment and happiness.

Judy and Dexter constantly try to search for meaning and happiness in the short story. Dexter becomes the victim of the winter dreams. These dreams are the teenage illusion that he never achieves. In his constant search for happiness and love, he only focuses on Judy Jones. He makes her the only subject for his romantic projections.

Dexter is unable to see the real Judy and who she is in actuality, rather he takes her as an ideal woman who embodies perfect love. Judy later reveals her true nature when she tells Dexter that she breaks off with a man who wants to pursue her because of her beauty and does not belong to a strong financial background.

Even then, Dexter is blind to see her real nature and his idealistic view of her. However, he cannot completely separate himself from the uncountable and romantic attachment he has with Judy. Judy and Dexter, time and again, struggle with inconsistencies between fantasy and reality.

For instance, Dexter is disappointed to see Judy in a simple and average dressing. He was expecting ritual and pomp, Judy blandly ordered the maid to serve the dinner.

Judy treats Dexter with interest, malice, encouragement, contempt, and indifference in their protracted and ambiguous relationship. However, they both are limp along due to the idealistic vision. When Judy Jones is introduced in the short story, she is an eleven-year-old daughter of a wealthy Mortimer Jones.

She has a perceptible spark and passionate quality that appears to be bewitching to Dexter. However, when she shows imperviousness on the golf course, Dexter decides to quit his job of caddying. Moreover, he remembers his winter dreams and resolution that he should not take the order of anyone who is so young. Dexter meets Judy again after several years when he makes his fortune at the laundry business. One of the interesting things is, the readers do not know anything about the physical appearance of Dexter.

The only thing mentioned about him in the story is his background, class, and ambition. However, Judy is described only on the basis of his appearance and how she uses them to lure wealthy men. The way Fitzgerald characterizes Dexter and Judy mirrors the limitation of gender.

Dexter utilizes his energy and passion for creating a business for him, while Judy hopes to find herself a husband through her looks. She shows fake passion and affection to men and attracts them to marry her, even though she is not sincere with any of them as she has many suitors and thus many options. Just like Dexter, Judy is also planning for her future deliberately. However, Dexter is praised while Judy is criticized. Both Dexter and Judy consume people like material.

The way Judy is indifferent to her suitors and treats them with indifference, Dexter is indifferent to Irene. He believes that apart from a bushel of content, Irene will not bring him happiness. He always looks for happiness in Judy. He refuses the domestic comfort offered by Irene for the passion he has for Judy. They both pick people up and then discard them at their own whim. Fitzgerald pointed out the shared hard-minded attitude of Judy and Dexter, and this attitude is born from their ambition for influence and wealth.

In the story, Fitzgerald has juxtaposed the linear concept of time with the cyclic one. The linear narrative of time deals with Dexter moving to the East and becoming a wealthy man; his career develops and so does his age.

The movement of time is linear. While cyclic nature of time is shown through the season, and it shows the lack of emotional maturation of Dexter. When he is introduced in the story, he is an ambitious and eager teenager. Though the business and professional career of Dexter is making a linear progression, his physiological progression is cyclic.

He returns to the Island both physically and in imaginations until, at the end of the story, he awakens from his winter dream. And then realizes that he cannot return. Both structurally and symbolically, winter is important to the narrative. When the story begins, it is winter, and when it ends, it is again winters.

This suggests the whole journey of Dexter from ambitious youth to a successful businessman is in the form of a natural cycle,.

At the beginning of the story, the winters in Minnesota are described as something like a white lid of the box that leaves everything covered in snow. This site of snow, though, offends Dexter as the site of so much activity turns desolate, he passionately skies over the course. At this time, golf represents a part of the rarefied world, and he feels a part of it. However, the world only exists in summer. Just like his relationship to the golf course, the winter dreams of Dexter also appear to be delusional.

Certainly, at the end of the story, Dexter realizes the fact that despite the fact he has achieved tremendous success, he can never achieve the life he dreamed of or imagined. He always finds himself imagining skiing on the golf course. When he learns that he will never be able to marry Judy, he also realizes that his winter dreams are never going to be fulfilled. In the story, Judy is associated with summer as it is the season when the wealthy members of golfclub flaunt their wealth and also inspire the winter dreams of Dexter.

The loss of Judy makes Dexter cry not only because he has lost something warm and beautiful but also because he will never be able to get back to that summer, which was a source of reliving for him. His realization means that time must move forward towards the darkness.

Like Judy, the sun has faded and only leaves the closed gates. Fitzgerald makes the readers realize that time moves forward while dreams are recurrent and cyclic illusions. The dreams of Dexter can become his reality, just like summer and winter cannot co-exist. Just like the divided nature in the story, the characters of Fitzgerald are shown as incomplete and fractured as they hunt for wealth and pleasure.

Moreover, the particular structure of the story also suggests that there is no coherent core to ground the characters for meaning and stability in their search for identity and self-awareness. Certainly, Dexter lacks a clear and definite sense of self. Dexter is the product of fragmentary experiences as the story relates to the aspects of coming-of-age.

He struggles to find direction and clarity in Judy that his own life lacks. The way Fitzgerald narrates the story, his views about the whirlwind lives of Judy and Dexter is very much apparent. Fitzgerald, at several points, directly addresses readers, which makes the story immediate and highlights the fact that he is not only just narrating the story but also extracting some particular details from the lives of his character for some good reasons.

The direct addresses are sometimes in the form of rhetorical questions. The story moves about in time and is an account of the lives of Judy Jones and Dexter Green in just two decades. This narrative and structural choice lend richness and complexity to the description of the gradual draining away of the illusion of Dexter. Fitzgerald also proposes the intricate role that is played by different events that shape the response of Dexter to Judy through juxtaposing different disembodied episodes in the personal and professional life of Dexter and therefore set up the high cost of his winter dreams.

Dexter is unable to bury his past. He is always living in his past. Dexter tries to escape from the temporary changes, and the passage of the seasons function as the background to the romantic possession. When the story begins, Dexter is fourteen years old and ultimately offers a quick summary of his rise and progression in life.

However, when the story concludes, Dexter is only thirty-three years old. The character of Dexter is shown as an ironic juxtaposition in just a few paragraphs. However, the story also deals with a historical period that serves as a background of on and of the relationship between Judy and Dexter.

The time period, as shown in the story, is the early decades of the twentieth century — from the mid of the first decade to the early s. The early twenties were known as the Jazz and is more precisely known for the time of unchecked hedonism. Self-gratification was the most popular notion of the time.

It was the era of opulent parties, grand social gestures, and fashion trends for the affluent people. It was the time when people were the least concerned about their past and even did not have any regard for the future. The time also saw many people endorsing a reckless embrace of the moment as America has emerged as a victorious country from World War I, and entered into extraordinary economic prosperity. Fitzgerald captured the spirit of the age in his image and emerged as the laureate of the Jazz Age.

He also embodies freewheeling and hedonistic zeal in his personal life. However, he only deals with certain types of characters. The character of Judy embodies all types of girls who are selfish, fickle, and histrionic rich girls. She controls her body and throws over men so as to navigate her way through the social world through her charm and beauty. Judy is so much involved in the moment and does not have much regard for the larger implications of her changes of heart.

On the other side, Dexter is a convert who represents the middle-class imposter standing outside the bars and seduced by the self-indulgence and wealth represented by the dancing couple. To Fitzgerald, those who are not able to escape the world, the pursuit of pleasures alienates them.

The recurrent images, structures, and literary devices in a literary text are called Motifs. The emphasis on the idea helps develop the major themes of a work.