Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Winter Dreams, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class Mobility and the American Dream
Gender and Ambition
Dreams, Happiness, and Reality
Time, Progress, and Repetition
Summary
Analysis
Dexter's decision to spend the night with Judy leads him to break his engagement with Irene and to become engaged to Judy, whose “flare for him endured just one month.” After their final break-up, Dexter accepts that he will go on loving her, but he tells himself again that “he could not have her.”
Judy's fickleness does not diminish Dexter's love but rather renders her, once again, an object that he cannot have.
Themes
Dexter soon enters World War I as a first officer and, ironically, views the war as a welcome distraction from his emotional turmoil. After the war, he sells his laundries and settles in New York, as he had long planned.
The war—an annihilating force—gives Dexter an excuse to start over, to overcome his obsession with Judy and to start a new life in New York, but one still aligned with his dream of social prestige.
Themes
