We all know how is feels to
reminisce about the past. Raking up the
fresh fallen fall leaves and jumping in them, playing hide-and-go-seek with the
neighborhood friends, sled riding down the biggest hill we could find, and the
first love of our lives. That first look
into the other’s eyes told us that we were in love. “…in the almost passionate quality of her
eyes” (2128). Holding hands while
walking in the park or slow dancing at the high school prom, or hearing an old
song from the prom that we can remember like it was yesterday, “They had played
it at a prom once and because he could not afford the luxury of proms in those
days he had stood outside the gymnasium and listened” (2132). We knew that
nothing would ever separate us from that love. But what we didn’t realize then
was that there would be many more to follow.
When we come back to reality, the
present strikes us. Then we always ask
ourselves the same questions. Do I have
enough money in the bank to pick up my prescription? Do the kids have enough money in their
accounts at school so they can eat? Am I
doing my job right? Am I going to be one
of the ones to get laid-off? Should I
settle for the person I’m seeing right now, or should I continue looking? Without realizing what is happening, we doubt
ourselves every day of our lives.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories
“Winter Dreams” (2127) and “Babylon Revisited” (2143) had the main characters,
Dexter and Charlie, answering a lot of questions having to do with their past,
present, and future. But as they both
realize, there is nothing you can do about escaping your past.
I think Dexter made his biggest
mistake the day he told Mr. Mortimer Jones “I don’t want to caddy
anymore”(2128). If only he would have
caddied for Mr. Jones, he may have met Judy Jones a lot sooner and on better
terms. I believe he realized his mistake
when he saw Judy Jones out on the golf course…“When Dexter first saw her she
was standing by the caddy house”(2128).
He had fallen in love with her right then and there. After that encounter Dexter became obsessed
with Judy Jones.
When Dexter’s “winter dreams”
talked him out of staying in Lake Erminie, he found himself on the east coast
of the United States going to school. He
went to a more prominent college than the State University because “he wanted
not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the
glittering things themselves”(2130). I
think the reason Dexter wanted all these glittering things was to impress Judy
Jones with his wealth. This way she
would be more interested in him…and that’s what he was hoping.
When Dexter was twenty-three, he
was given a guest card from an elder member of the Lake Erminie Club. While golfing with some members of the club,
he spotted Judy Jones again. It had been
the first time since he had quit the club, some years before, that he had seen
her. He fell in love with her again. Later on in the evening while quietly lying
on a raft in the lake, Judy Jones appeared again, only this time she was in her
boat. She offered him an invitation to
dinner the next evening and he graciously accepted.
When Dexter learned that Judy Jones
went for men like fish to water, he made every effort to forget about the love
of his life. After borrowing “a thousand
dollars from his college degree and his steady eyes, and bought a partnership
in a laundry”(2130). He did well
in the laundry business. “Dexter made a specialty of learning how the English
washed fine woolen golf stockings without shrinking them”(2130). By the time Dexter had reached the age of
twenty-seven, he owned five laundries located in different parts of the city
outside of Lake Erminie.
He was so obsessed with Judy Jones
that after the eighteen months “it occurred to him that he could not have Judy
Jones. He had to beat this into his mind
but he convinced himself at last”(2137).
Dexter tried to get Judy Jones out of his mind by becoming engaged to
Irene Scheerer. “Irene was light haired
and sweet and honorable and a little stout and she had two beaus whom she
pleasantly relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry
him”(2137).
Dexter was starting to feel better
with himself until he had gone to the College Club one night and Judy Jones
walked in. All of his withdrawn feelings
came back in a heartbeat. He had taught
himself to be “cold” when it came to her until she said, “I wish you’d marry
me”(2139).
Dexter was going to regret, for the
rest of his life, his next move. He
broke the engagement off with Irene.
“Nor did it matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper
agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Irene Scheerer and to Irene’s parents
who had befriended him. In his mind and
heart he knew he had finally won Judy Jones’ heart. But it did not happen. Judy Jones found another man and let go of
him like an autumn leaf falling from a tree.
With intentions of going east to New York and selling his laundries, he
changed his plans because of the U.S. going into WWI. Instead, he “handed over the management of
the business to his partner and went into the first officers’ training camp in
late April. He was one of those young
thousands who greeted the war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation
from webs of tangled emotion.
After returning from the war seven
years later, Dexter was called upon by a man from Detroit. From this gentleman Dexter learned that Judy
Jones had married a man and had children.
After finding out that Judy Jones was not the beautiful woman that she once
was, Dexter laid “down on his lounge in his office and looked out the window at
the New York skyline into which the sun was sinking in dully lovely shades of
pink and gold. The dream was gone. Something had been taken from
him”(2142).
“Long ago,” he said, “long ago,
there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is
gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no
more”(2143). In this statement, I
believe that Dexter lost his heart. I think
he was saying that he wasn’t able to care about anyone anymore. He could not love again because he wasn’t
able to win the love of Judy Jones.
Charlie had a different past than Dexter. Charlie was able to win the love of his life,
Helen. With Helen, he had a child,
Honoria. But like all good things, they
must to an end and that’s what was happening with Helen and Charlie. He began drinking badly and they were always
fighting. Helen was being unfaithful,
but seemed to be having fun. Unfortunately,
Helen passed away due to heart failure and Charlie was institutionalized for
his drinking. Helen’s sister, Marion,
had custody of their daughter and Honoria was a happy nine-year-old child.
It took Charlie almost a year to
overcome his dependence on alcohol and his wife’s death. When he came to Paris, he always made time to
see his little Honoria and she was always happy to see him. She shrieked “Daddy! And flew up, struggling
like a fish, into his arms. She pulled
his head around by one ear and set her cheek against his”(2145).
Marion and Lincoln Peters had two
children of their own and lived comfortably in their home. Charlie liked their house. He knew his daughter was safe from any harm
and he couldn’t have asked for anyone else to take better care of Honoria than
his brother-in-law and sister-in-law.
But the time had come to have Honoria back with him and he knew he had
his work cut out for him, especially because of his past.
When “going out of the restaurant,
a man and a woman unexpectedly hailed him”(2148). Charlie and Helen had many friends, but one
of the couples, Lorraine and Duncan, were still the outgoing partying
kind. They only had each other so they
did party quite frequently.
Charlie had every intention of
asking Lincoln and Marion to consider giving custody of Honoria back to
him. When he went to their house one
evening, he said, “I suppose you know what I want to see you about—why I really
came to Paris”(2149). He spoke with
authority and he was sober, as he had been for over a year. “I’m awfully anxious to have a home, he
continued, and I’m awfully anxious to have Honoria in it”(2149). Helen wasn’t so anxious about giving up
Honoria to a father who had behaved badly in the past. “When she was dying she asked me to look out
for Honoria. If you hadn’t been in a
sanitarium then, it might have helped matters”(2150). After discussing the issue for a while,
Marion got tired of it and said, “Do as you like! She’s your child. I’m not the person to stand in your
way”(2152).
Charlie felt like a new person the
next morning. He made plans for his
sister to come over from America to take care of the house and he was going to
see about a governess for Honoria. He
went over to Lincoln and Marion’s house to get Honoria when the worst thing in
the world happened.
The knock at the door came at wrong
time. It was Duncan and Lorraine and
they were in high spirits. They had been
drinking and everyone in the household knew it.
They were there to invite Charlie out to dinner even though Charlie had
no idea on how they found the house.
Charlie tried politely to tell them no, but Lorraine replied, “All
right, we’ll go. But I remember once
when you hammered on my door at four A.M.
I was enough of a good sport to give you a drink”(2155).
Needless to say, Marion and Lincoln
were not pleased with the unexpected guests.
When Charlie called Lincoln the next day, Lincoln said, “I know this
thing isn’t altogether your fault, but I can’t have her go to pieces thinking
about it. I’m afraid we’ll have to let
it slide for six months; I can’t take the chance of working her up to this
state again”(2157). But Charlie knew one
thing for sure after the phone call. “He
was absolutely sure Helen wouldn’t have wanted him to be so alone”(2157).
I think if Fitzgerald had continued
with this story, it would have had a happy ending. Charlie would have gotten his house, his
sister, the governess, and most importantly, Honoria.
Although Dexter and Charlie lived
at different times and their predicaments fluctuated, Fitzgerald’s similarities
about the two of them were unremarkable.
Considering he wrote “Winter Dreams” in 1922 and “Babylon Revisited” in
1951, the average reader, like me, would have thought the stories were written
within a year or two of one another…not 30 years apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment