Winter Dreams Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Winter Dreams Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Winter Dreams is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that explores the life of Dexter Green, a young man from a modest background who dreams of wealth and success. Set against the backdrop of Minnesota's changing seasons, the narrative delves into themes of ambition, love, and the fleeting nature of dreams. Dexter's infatuation with Judy Jones, a beautiful yet capricious woman, drives much of the plot, highlighting the complexities of desire and social status. This story is essential for readers interested in American literature and the Jazz Age, as it reflects the era's cultural dynamics and the pursuit of the American Dream.

Key Points

  • Explores Dexter Green's journey from caddy to successful businessman.
  • Highlights the romantic and tumultuous relationship between Dexter and Judy Jones.
  • Examines themes of ambition, social class, and the disillusionment of dreams.
  • Set in Minnesota, showcasing the impact of seasonal changes on the narrative.
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1
WINTER DREAMS
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald
SOME OF THE CADDIES were poor as sin and lived in one-
room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but
Dexter Green's father owned the second best grocery-store in
Black Bear--the best one was "The Hub," patronized by the
wealthy people from Sherry Island--and Dexter caddied only
for pocket-money.
In the fall when the days became crisp and gray, and the long
Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter's
skis moved over the snow that hid the fairways of the golf
course. At these times the country gave him a feeling of
profound melancholy--it offended him that the links should lie in
enforced fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long
season. It was 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. When he crossed the
hills the wind blew cold as misery, and if the sun was out he
tramped with his eyes squinted up against the hard
dimensionless glare.
In April the winter ceased abruptly. The snow ran down into
Black Bear Lake scarcely tarrying for the early golfers to brave
the season with red and black balls. Without elation, without an
interval of moist glory, the cold was gone.
Dexter knew that there was something dismal about this
Northern spring, just as he knew there was something
gorgeous about the fall. Fall made him clinch his hands and
tremble and repeat idiotic sentences to himself, and make brisk
abrupt gestures of command to imaginary audiences and
armies. October filled him with hope which November raised to
a sort of ecstatic triumph, and in this mood the fleeting brilliant
impressions of the summer at Sherry Island were ready grist to
his mill. He became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T. A.
Hedrick in a marvellous match played a hundred times over the
fairways of his imagination, a match each detail of which he
changed about untiringly--sometimes he won with almost
laughable ease, sometimes he came up magnificently from
behind. Again, stepping from a Pierce-Arrow automobile, like
Mr. Mortimer Jones, he strolled frigidly into the lounge of the
Sherry Island Golf Club-- or perhaps, surrounded by an
admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving from the
spring-board of the club raft. . . . Among those who watched
him in open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones.
And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones--himself and not
his ghost-- came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said
that Dexter was the----best caddy in the club, and wouldn't he
decide not to quit if Mr. Jones made it worth his while, because
every other caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him--
regularly----
"No, sir," said Dexter decisively, "I don't want to caddy any
more." Then, after a pause: "I'm too old."
"You're not more than fourteen. Why the devil did you decide
just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that
next week you'd go over to the State tournament with me."
"I decided I was too old."
Dexter handed in his "A Class" badge, collected what money
was due him from the caddy master, and walked home to
Black Bear Village.
"The best----caddy I ever saw," shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones
over a drink that afternoon. "Never lost a ball! Willing!
Intelligent! Quiet! Honest! Grateful!"
The little girl who had done this was eleven--beautifully ugly as
little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be
inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great
number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There
was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted ,down at
the corners when she smiled, and in the--Heaven help us!--in
the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early
in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through
her thin frame in a sort of glow.
She had come eagerly out on to the course at nine o'clock with
a white linen nurse and five small new golf-clubs in a white
canvas bag which the nurse was carrying. When Dexter first
saw her she was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at
ease and trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an
obviously unnatural conversation graced by startling and
irrelevant grimaces from herself.
"Well, it's certainly a nice day, Hilda," Dexter heard her say.
She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced
furtively around, her eyes in transit falling for an instant on
Dexter.
Then to the nurse:
"Well, I guess there aren't very many people out here this
morning, are there?"
The smile again--radiant, blatantly artificial--convincing.
"I don't know what we're supposed to do now," said the nurse,
looking nowhere in particular.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll fix it up.
Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew
that if he moved forward a step his stare would be in her line of
vision--if he moved backward he would lose his full view of her
face. For a moment he had not realized how young she was.
Now he remembered having seen her several times the year
before in bloomers.
Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed, a short abrupt laugh--
then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk quickly
away.
"Boy!"
Dexter stopped.
"Boy----"
2
Beyond question he was addressed. Not only that, but he was
treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile--the
memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into
middle age.
"Boy, do you know where the golf teacher is?"
"He's giving a lesson."
"Well, do you know where the caddy-master is?"
"He isn't here yet this morning."
"Oh." For a moment this baffled her. She stood alternately on
her right and left foot.
"We'd like to get a caddy," said the nurse. "Mrs. Mortimer
Jones sent us out to play golf, and we don't know how without
we get a caddy."
Here she was stopped by an ominous glance from Miss Jones,
followed immediately by the smile.
"There aren't any caddies here except me," said Dexter to the
nurse, "and I got to stay here in charge until the caddy-master
gets here."
"Oh."
Miss Jones and her retinue now withdrew, and at a proper
distance from Dexter became involved in a heated
conversation, which was concluded by Miss Jones taking one
of the clubs and hitting it on the ground with violence. For
further emphasis she raised it again and was about to bring it
down smartly upon the nurse's bosom, when the nurse seized
the club and twisted it from her hands.
"You damn little mean old thing!" cried Miss Jones wildly.
Another argument ensued. Realizing that the elements of the
comedy were implied in the scene, Dexter several times began
to laugh, but each time restrained the laugh before it reached
audibility. He could not resist the monstrous conviction that the
little girl was justified in beating the nurse.
The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the
caddymaster, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse.
"Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can't
go."
"Mr. McKenna said I was to wait here till you came," said
Dexter quickly.
"Well, he's here now." Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the
caddy-master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a
haughty mince toward the first tee.
"Well?" The caddy-master turned to Dexter. "What you
standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady's
clubs."
"I don't think I'll go out to-day," said Dexter.
"You don't----"
"I think I'll quit."
The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite
caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the
summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But
he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation
required a violent and immediate outlet.
It is not so simple as that, either. As so frequently would be the
case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his
winter dreams.
II
NOW, OF COURSE, the quality and the seasonability of these
winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained. They
persuaded Dexter several years later to pass up a business
course at the State university--his father, prospering now,
would have paid his way--for the precarious advantage of
attending an older and more famous university in the East,
where he was bothered by his scanty funds. But do not get the
impression, because his winter dreams happened to be
concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was
anything merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not
association with glittering things and glittering people--he
wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out
for the best without knowing why he wanted it--and sometimes
he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in
which life indulges. It is with one of those denials and not with
his career as a whole that this story deals.
He made money. It was rather amazing. After college he went
to the city from which Black Bear Lake draws its wealthy
patrons. When he was only twenty-three and had been there
not quite two years, there were already people who liked to
say: "Now there's a boy--" All about him rich men's sons were
peddling bonds precariously, or investing patrimonies
precariously, or plodding through the two dozen volumes of the
"George Washington Commercial Course," but Dexter
borrowed a thousand dollars on his college degree and his
confident mouth, and bought a partnership in a laundry.
It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a
specialty of learning how the English washed fine woollen golf-
stockings without shrinking them, and within a year he was
catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were
insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his
laundry just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find
golfballs. A little later he was doing their wives' lingerie as well-
-and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before
he was twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries
in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and
went to New York. But the part of his story that concerns us
goes back to the days when he was making his first big
success.
When he was twenty-three Mr. Hart--one of the gray-haired
men who like to say "Now there's a boy"--gave him a guest
3
card to the Sherry Island Golf Club for a week-end. So he
signed his name one day on the register, and that afternoon
played golf in a foursome with Mr. Hart and Mr. Sandwood and
Mr. T. A. Hedrick. He did not consider it necessary to remark
that he had once carried Mr. Hart's bag over this same links,
and that he knew every trap and gully with his eyes shut--but
he found himself glancing at the four caddies who trailed them,
trying to catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of
himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his
present and his past.
It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar
impressions. One minute he had the sense of being a
trespasser--in the next he was impressed by the tremendous
superiority he felt toward Mr. T. A. Hedrick, who was a bore
and not even a good golfer any more.
Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the fifteenth green,
an enormous thing happened. While they were searching the
stiff grasses of the rough there was a clear call of "Fore!" from
behind a hill in their rear. And as they all turned abruptly from
their search a bright new ball sliced abruptly over the hill and
caught Mr. T. A. Hedrick in the abdomen.
"By Gad!" cried Mr. T. A. Hedrick, "they ought to put some of
these crazy women off the course. It's getting to be
outrageous."
A head and a voice came up together over the hill:
"Do you mind if we go through?"
"You hit me in the stomach!" declared Mr. Hedrick wildly.
"Did I?" The girl approached the group of men. "I'm sorry. I
yelled 'Fore !'"
Her glance fell casually on each of the men--then scanned the
fairway for her ball.
"Did I bounce into the rough?"
It was impossible to determine whether this question was
ingenuous or malicious. In a moment, however, she left no
doubt, for as her partner came up over the hill she called
cheerfully:
"Here I am! I'd have gone on the green except that I hit
something."
As she took her stance for a short mashie shot, Dexter looked
at her closely. She wore a blue gingham dress, rimmed at
throat and shoulders with a white edging that accentuated her
tan. The quality of exaggeration, of thinness, which had made
her passionate eyes and down-turning mouth absurd at eleven,
was gone now. 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.
She swung her mashie impatiently and without interest,
pitching the ball into a sand-pit on the other side of the green.
With a quick, insincere smile and a careless "Thank you!" she
went on after it.
"That Judy Jones!" remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as
they waited--some moments--for her to play on ahead. "All she
needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then
to be married off to an oldfashioned cavalry captain."
"My God, she's good-looking!" said Mr. Sandwood, who was
just over thirty.
"Good-looking!" cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, "she always
looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow-
eyes on every calf in town!"
It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the
maternal instinct.
"She'd play pretty good golf if she'd try," said Mr. Sandwood.
"She has no form," said Mr. Hedrick solemnly.
"She has a nice figure," said Mr. Sandwood.
"Better thank the Lord she doesn't drive a swifter ball," said Mr.
Hart, winking at Dexter.
Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of
gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling
night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of
the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the
little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the
moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear
pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing-suit and swam
out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet
canvas of the springboard.
There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights
around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a
piano was playing the songs of last summer and of summers
before that-- songs from "Chin-Chin" and "The Count of
Luxemburg" and "The Chocolate Soldier"--and because the
sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed
beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened.
The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay
and new five years before when Dexter was a sophomore at
college. They had played it at a prom once when he could not
afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the
gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in
him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed
what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense
appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently
attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a
brightness and a glamour he might never know again.
A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness
of the Island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing
motor-boat. Two white streamers of cleft water rolled
themselves out behind it and almost immediately the boat was
beside him, drowning out the hot tinkle of the piano in the
drone of its spray. Dexter raising himself on his arms was
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FAQs of Winter Dreams Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What is the main theme of Winter Dreams?
The main theme of Winter Dreams revolves around the pursuit of the American Dream and the disillusionment that often accompanies it. Dexter Green's aspirations for wealth and social status drive him to chase after Judy Jones, a symbol of beauty and privilege. However, as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the fulfillment of these dreams is often temporary and can lead to emotional turmoil. Fitzgerald uses Dexter's experiences to illustrate the emptiness that can accompany material success and the complexities of human desire.
Who is Judy Jones and what role does she play in Dexter's life?
Judy Jones is a central character in Winter Dreams, representing both Dexter's ideal of beauty and the unattainable nature of his dreams. She is a captivating and capricious woman who captures Dexter's heart, leading him to pursue her despite the emotional challenges she presents. Throughout the story, Judy's actions reflect the unpredictability of love and desire, ultimately highlighting the disparity between Dexter's aspirations and the reality of his relationships. Her influence on Dexter shapes his journey and contributes to the story's exploration of ambition and disillusionment.
How does the setting influence the narrative of Winter Dreams?
The setting of Winter Dreams plays a crucial role in shaping the narrative, with Minnesota's changing seasons mirroring Dexter's emotional journey. The stark contrasts between winter's desolation and summer's vibrancy reflect Dexter's internal struggles and aspirations. As he navigates his dreams and desires, the seasonal shifts symbolize the fleeting nature of youth and ambition. Fitzgerald masterfully uses the setting to enhance the themes of the story, illustrating how the environment can impact one's dreams and relationships.
What happens to Dexter Green by the end of Winter Dreams?
By the end of Winter Dreams, Dexter Green experiences a profound sense of loss and disillusionment. After achieving financial success and rekindling his relationship with Judy Jones, he realizes that his dreams do not bring the fulfillment he anticipated. Judy's eventual rejection and the fading of his youthful ambitions leave Dexter feeling empty and disconnected from the ideals he once pursued. The story concludes with Dexter reflecting on the transient nature of his dreams, emphasizing the bittersweet reality of his journey.

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