Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Name: Winter Dreams
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dexter Green, son of the owner of the second-best grocery store in Black Bear, caddies at the Sherry Island Golf Club for pocket money despite his family's relative comfort. Prone to vivid "winter dreams" of wealth and glamour, he quits caddying abruptly at fourteen after a humiliating encounter with eleven-year-old Judy Jones, who berates her nurse and expects to be given a caddy on demand. Driven by these same winter dreams, Dexter later passes up a state university business course to attend a more prestigious Eastern university despite financial strain. After college he builds a laundry business, specializing in cleaning woolen golf clothing for the wealthy, and becomes rich by his mid-twenties. At twenty-three, invited back to Sherry Island as a guest, Dexter plays golf with Mr. Hart, Mr. Sandwood, and Mr. T. A. Hedrick. Judy Jones, now a strikingly beautiful young woman, interrupts their game by driving a ball into Hedrick's stomach, and the men discuss her careless allure and many admirers. That evening, swimming near the club, Dexter is summoned by Judy in her motorboat; she invites him to dinner the next night, and he begins an on-and-off romantic pursuit of her, unaware at the time of how consuming it will become. Dexter falls fully for Judy, who treats him with a mixture of passion, neglect, and cruelty, seeing other men (including a wealthy visitor from New York) even as she draws Dexter back repeatedly. After she goes cold on him for over a year, Dexter becomes engaged to Irene Scheerer, a kind, popular young woman whose father has always supported him. Just before their engagement is to be announced, Judy returns from traveling, finds Dexter at a dance, and persuades him to drive her home, weeping and declaring she wants to marry him. Dexter breaks his implicit commitment to Irene and goes inside with Judy. Their renewed affair lasts only a month; Judy ends it, claiming untruthfully that she didn't want to "take him away" from Irene, though she had wanted exactly that. Dexter's engagement to Irene is destroyed, hurting her and her parents, though Dexter feels strangely indifferent to the social fallout. Soon after, America enters the war, and Dexter joins an officers' training camp, partly relieved to escape his emotional turmoil. Seven years later, at thirty-two and successful in New York, Dexter is visited by a businessman named Devlin from Detroit, who happens to know Judy—now married to a man named Lud Simms who drinks, runs around, and treats her poorly, though she stays home with her children and seemingly still loves him. Devlin casually remarks that Judy has faded, calling her merely "all right" rather than beautiful, and notes that "lots of women fade just like that." Dexter is stunned and disturbed by this deflation of the image he has carried for years. After Devlin leaves, Dexter realizes that the loss is not of Judy herself but of the dream and illusion he had attached to her—the sense of wonder, youth, and possibility from his younger years. He weeps, but only for himself and for the irretrievable loss of that capacity to feel and dream as he once did, recognizing that "that thing is gone" and will not return.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald · First published 1922 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Romance · 6 chapters · 10,026 words

First lines

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.

What this Textopian page supports

Winter Dreams is listed on Textopian as a novella by F. Scott Fitzgerald, dated 1922 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Work type: Novella
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Date: 1922 CE
Language: English
Genres: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Romance, Modernism, Short Story
Length: 10,026 words
Structure: 6 chapters, 215 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Work identity for Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Discussion starters

What should a reader notice first when entering Winter Dreams?
How does this novella by F. Scott Fitzgerald fit its genre, period, or classroom use?
Where does Literary Fiction first become important in the reading?

Similar titles

Genres

Literary Fiction — The story explores complex themes of ambition, class, and the pursuit of dreams, characteristic of literary fiction.
Coming-of-Age — The protagonist, Dexter Green, undergoes significant personal growth and self-discovery throughout the narrative.
Romance — The central relationship between Dexter and Judy Jones drives much of the plot and emotional conflict.
Modernism — The narrative employs modernist techniques, including a focus on subjective experience and fragmented time.