At the beginning of the story, when setting the scene, the narrator describes what winter is like in Minnesota, using a simile in the process:
In the fall when the days became crisp and gray, and the long Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter’s skis moved over the snow that hid the fairways of the golf course. At these times the country gave him a feeling of profound melancholy—it offended him that the links should lie in enforced fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long season.
The simile here compares the snowy Minnesota winter to “the white lid of a box” shutting down the landscape, helping readers to visualize just how much snow covers the ground for “the long season.” As the narrator explains, Dexter does not favor the winter, as he finds it “offensive” that the golf course cannot be used.
Despite being able to ski over the golf course, Dexter still becomes “melancholy” in winter, and it is his melancholy during the "closed box lid" of winter that leads him to develop his “winter dreams” of growing up, becoming a successful businessman, and being able to return to Minnesota a wealthy man. If not for the “fallowness” of winter, Dexter would not have had time to develop his ambitious dreams.
After Judy runs into Dexter on the lake and asks him to drive her boat while she surfs on the waves, they strike up a conversation. The narrator uses a simile to capture Dexter’s emotional reaction in this moment, as seen in the following passage:
“It’s awful cold,” she shouted. “What’s your name?”
He told her.
“Well, why don’t you come to dinner to-morrow night?”
His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life.
Here, the narrator describes how Dexter’s “heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat,” using a simile to communicate how vigorously Dexter’s heart is beating in this moment. Even when boats are otherwise completely still, fly-wheels continue to move quickly. So it makes sense that, in this moment, Dexter compares his inner experience to a fast-moving object in his sightline.
This moment is significant because it helps readers understand how much of an effect Judy has on Dexter, even though they hardly know each other at this point in the story. As the narrator states, Judy’s “casual whim” of inviting Dexter to have dinner that night “gave a new direction to his life.” So begins the pattern of Dexter romanticizing his relationship with Judy when, in reality, Judy simply does what she wants with little attention or care to how it affects Dexter.
