LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Student Presentation on Reading Selections 2006

Monday 27 November: F. Scott Fitzgerald, N 2126-2143 (“Winter Dreams”)

selection reader / discussion leader: Brouke M. Rose-Carpenter

 

 Winter Dreams

 by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

A bit of Biography:

v     Francis Scott Fitzgerald  

v     September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940

v     An Irish American Jazz Age Novelist and short story writer

v     Regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century

v     Self-styled spokesman of the “lost generation”

v     Finished four novels, left the fifth un-finished

v     Dozens of short stories

v     1913-1917 attended Princeton University

v     Dropped out in 1917, enlisted in the US Army for WWI

v     Never fought, the war ended shortly after his enlistment, which he always regretted

v     Met Zelda Sayre (1900-1948) at Camp Sheridan.  He called her the “top girl.”  She rejected him at first.  He went to New York to make a fortune and win Zelda, He Succeeded!  The two were engaged in 1919

v     1920 married

v     October 26, 1921, first and only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, was born.

 

 

v     They lived way beyond their means

v     Moved to Europe in 1924.  Living cost were cheaper.  They became friends with Hemingway, Stein, and Pound, among others. 

v     1930 He became an alcoholic and Zelda broke down and spent the rest of her life in mental institutions. 

 

Other Works:

Other works

Some facts: “Winter Dreams” was first published in Metropolitan Magazine in December 1922, and collected in All Sad Young Men in 1926. 

“The story has come to be regarded as one of Fitzgerald’s finest and most eloquent statements on the destructive nature of the American Dream.”  (Bookrags.com)

Summary:  “Winter Dreams” chronicles the rise of Dexter Green, a hardworking confident young man who becomes caught up in the pursuit of wealth and status.  When he meets Judy Jones, a beautiful vibrant young woman, he sees her as an embodiment of a glittering world of excitement and promise. 

“He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people--- be wanted the glittering things themselves.”

Judy represents for him the epitome of what he considers to be the intense and passionate life of the American elite.  Through her, Dexter hopes to experience all the benefits that he believes this lifestyle can afford him.  At the beginning of their relationship, he feels ecstatic.  His senses become finely tuned to the wealthy world in which he has come in contact.  As a result, he becomes filled with an overwhelming consciousness and appreciation of this lifestyle, at the same time he also recognizes the fact that this life style is only to last for a short period of time.  Yet he fails to see the hollowness beneath Judy’s surface, a hollowness that is also at the core of her world.  By the end of the story, when he watches his beautiful image crumble, he is forced to admit that his winter dreams were merely an illusion.

Questions:

    1. What are some examples of Desire and Loss, Nostalgia, Idealism, Sublime, Gothic, & Transcendence (if any)?

 

    1. How well does Romanticism and Modernism coexist in this story?

 

    1. What aspects of this story represent the American idealism or the American dream? How is the American Dream both romanticized and undermined at once?