The narrator in "Winter Dreams" introduces the character of Judy Jones as an eleven-year-old child when she interacts with Dexter at the golf club. One way that F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys her importance to the story is through foreshadowing. In stating that in future, the girl will make "a great number of men" miserable, the narrator implies that Dexter will be one of them. The quoted passage that begins with "The little girl who had done this was eleven" conveys some elements of her physical appearance, but more about her personality. The author uses several other literary devices in addition to foreshadowing. These include imagery, oxymoron, interjection, and apostrophe.

The imagery in the narrator's commentary includes several elements of physical description. Her lips, eyes, and overall build are mentioned. Judy's lips are described as twisting "down at the corners when she smiled," and her eyes have an "almost passionate quality." Her body is said to have a "thin frame."

The oxymoron, the combination of contradictory terms, serves to establish the general tone and trajectory of the description. By describing Judy as "beautifully ugly," the narrator encourages the reader to wonder why these opposite qualifiers are both applied to her. As the passage progresses, the narrator calls attention to interior qualities connected with her future loveliness, such as a "spark, … the almost passionate quality of her eyes" and the "sort of glow" that shines out of her.

One of the narrator's most interesting techniques is the use of interjection and apostrophe, apparently in an ironic way. After referring to the "ungodliness" of her smile, the narrator inserts the brief exclamation "Heaven help us!" This combines interjection, an abrupt interruption, and apostrophe (direct address to a person, object, or abstract concept). As this phrase is a cliché often applied to hopeless situations, its use here seems ironic.