Winter Dreams And The Flapper Lifestyle Analysis

Winter Dreams and the Emptiness of the Flapper Lifestyle During the 1920s, there was a massive increase in the post-war economy and with it came many luxuries and technologies that many Americans had never seen before. The changing cultural climate brought with it drastic changes in the ideals and morals of youth because they had become disillusioned with their parent’s morals and lifestyles following World War 1. Interestingly, the disillusionment that the youth of America felt towards their parent’s way of living brought about the first real generation gap. The time of this specific generation gap would come to be known as the Jazz Age, and its culture was quickly becoming enamored with the idea of youth and living for

The line, “Succeeding Dexter’s first exhilaration came restlessness and dissatisfaction,” and how he compares Judy’s love to an opiate, illustrates that without Judy’s love he feels empty and starts craving it like a drug (Fitzgerald 5). Since Judy represents the flapper and the wild lifestyle flappers endorsed, Dexter’s craving of her love shows the burning desire that caused some women of the 1920s to, “betray their own standards of behavior in an effort to live up to the image of the flapper” (Ferentinos). On top of this, when Dexter mentions that Judy has played his interest in her against his interest in his work it draws direct parallels to how Fitzgerald was unable to write because of, “too much good-timing with Zelda” (Hook 32). Fitzgerald’s use of Dexter to implement personal experience about the lifestyle of the 1920s shows how the wildness of the roaring twenties distracts its victims from what’s essential and wastes their time in meaningless

Complementing the meaning of Dexter’s epiphany, Americans believed that it was impossible for the, “nations astounding prosperity to be unstable,” and so they, “stretched their debt capacities by purchasing automobiles and household appliances on installment plans,”(“The Great Depression”; “PROSPERITY” ). The American’s overspending shows how the obsession of youth and enjoyment of life, had made Americans ignorant to the financial danger they were creating for themselves. Furthermore, the protagonist’s realization that his winter dreams have been left behind in a land of youthful illusion, illustrates to the flapper and the 1920s American that their youthful dream of, “a more comfortable life, like the ones that they could see on the movie screens or read about in magazines and newspapers,” was a fantasy of youth that had spurned them to chase after its meaningless frivolity. (“Flappers” Ohio History