Winter Dreams Literary Analysis

Words: 456
Pages: 2

Is money everything? Dexter feels as if money can buy him love and happiness. Throughout the story he changes quite a bit. He overcomes his emotions when he realizes that life with money isn’t what he always expected it to be. The Sherry Island Golf Club is what he envisions his life to be like. “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald deals with theme, characterization, and setting to convey the thoughts and emotions that we all experience.

The theme of Winter Dreams is money doesn’t buy you love or happiness. Dexter strongly associates money with love. He thinks that if he has money he can win the love of Judy Jones. Instead, when he devotes himself to earning money, his ability to love goes away without him even knowing it. He also associates
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His main goal in life is to make tons of money and improve his social class. In the beginning, he wants all the grace and beauty that seems to go along with wealth. He wants the best for himself: “He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people - he wanted the glittering things themselves” (2.1). Dexter ends up doing pretty well for himself. By the end of the story he is living the high life as a Wall Street businessman. Along the way he realizes that the high life isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. His dreams of being in love have faded away without him even knowing it because all he’s been focused on is chasing money. He doesn’t have the life he expected, all he has is piles of money.

The Sherry Island Golf Club is where Dexter sees Judy Jones for the first time and where he falls in love with her later on. It is there that Dexter sees the lifestyles of the rich, which is what he wants for himself. The natural loveliness of Sherry Island ties the ideas of beauty and money together in Dexter’s mind. Sherry Island is the place where Dexter goes to dream of the fancy lifestyle that he wants.

Through theme, characterization, and setting F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys the thoughts and emotions that we all experience. Dexter realizes that money isn’t everything. Money can’t buy you love or happiness. He was so focused on achieving the social status he wanted and living the high life that he missed out