Dexter's Use Of Irony In Winter Dreams

On the surface it seems as though “Winter Dreams” is a romantic story about the love Dexter, a young man who aspires to surpass his middle-class background, has for Judy, a privileged young woman born into wealth. The moral of the story is about being one’s own worst enemy, and falling victim to our malformed impressions and ideals of the the world and our inability to independently define our own self-worth. The intro of “Winter Dreams” exposes Dexter's character when the narrator says, “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 use of the simile, “poor as sin” establishes Dexter’s repugnance of poverty. His obsession and fixation on status is revealed by using the words, “second-best grocery store.” He also describes winter as, “profoundly melancholy” associating winter with being extremely miserable and disturbing thus foreshadowing his final outcome at the end. Dexter covets the lives of the wealthy so he quits his job making the decision to become one of the rich men that plays golf instead of the mediocre helper. The same day Dexter quits his job he falls in love with Judy and

Judy loses her looks and falls into a bad marriage with a cheating alcoholic and her transformation into a homely housewife ultimately shatters Dexter’s illusions and ideal about a romantic life of the upper class. This is proven when the narrator says, “The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of [……..…] her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no