Winter Does Not Last

Though I have seen film based off of Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, I have never read the book. When Dr. Fruhauff passed the blogging sheet around in class I specifically chose to blog on Fitzgerald because I had never read anything by him. I liked both short stories assigned to us for class and chose to blog on “Winter Dreams”. The title itself I think, hints to what the story is about: a brief dream. This man Dexter retells a brief season in his young adult life when he is introduced to more than just figuring social status, money, and the next entrepreneur job he can expand upon. He is introduced to love. I personally wouldn’t call it love but rather an infatuation. Dexter meets Judy and is immediately smitten by her beauty and charm. I know physical attraction plays a part in the first introductions between a man and a woman but reading through the story, I quickly became frustrated with Dexter and his inability to see anything else beyond physical beauty in Judy. Fitzgerald does a swell job in conveying to us the deviousness, manipulating workings that are within woman. Judy knows exactly how to reel the men in with her “curvy lips” and commanding, husky voice. Judy is clearly only looking for a good time and whatever she wants, she gets.

“Whatever the beautiful Judy Jones desired, she went after with the full pressure of her charm. There was no divergence of method, no jockeying in any of her affairs. She simply made men conscious to the highest degree of her physical loveliness.” Page 1831

There is proof to this when Dexter justifies Judy’s indiscretions because of his passionate infatuation for her. He knows she is running around like a trollop with other men but Judy’s sweet nothings win Dexter over and over again during their season of “love” but as we know, winter does not last. There is sadness in the fact that this heated affair does take place in the cold season of winter but I find it rather appropriate on the author’s part. Both characters in the story want something more in their lives but they only know how to want in the moment. I think for the young and attractive Dexter and Judy, they exhaustively try to live in the “dream” of the moment and when it does not last, Dexter clings to that moment in time. He encapsulates this dream and remembers it with the passions of his youth. Later in Dexter’s life, when his “dream” of Judy is shattered with the news that she is in a loveless marriage tending to her brood of children, Dexter desperately looks back on his moments with Judy but he realizes that they are now lost.

“The gates were closed, the sun was gone down and there was no beauty but the grey 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 flourished. “Long ago,” he said, “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.” Page 1839

This ending is sad and confuses me. What is the “thing” he keeps repeating. What “thing” is now lost? His passions? His love? Or perhaps the “thing” is the dream that he dreamt that winter not so long ago?