misery to a great number of men." Judy's beauty—her desirability as an object—is again matched by her setting when she encounters Dexter on the lake at the club:

A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness of the Island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing motor-boat. Two white streamers of cleft water rolled themselves out behind it and almost immediately the boat was beside him, drowning out the hot tinkle of the piano in the drone of its spray. Dexter raising himself on his arms was aware of a figure standing at the wheel, of two dark eyes regarding him over the lengthening space of water—then the boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense and purposeless circle of spray round and round in the middle of the lake.

Judy's beauty and the beautiful scene she emerges from are, like her course on the lake, "immense and purposeless." We get a sense of Judy's feeling of entrapment by her own beauty when she says to Dexter, by way of enticement, that she "would be so beautiful" for him. Her objectification becomes clear when Dexter drives her home and her slight frame is contrasted with the enormous Jones mansion:

somnolent, gorgeous, drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight. Its solidity startled him. The strong walls, the steel of the girders, the breadth and beam and pomp of it were there only to bring out the contrast with the young beauty beside him. It was sturdy to accentuate her slightness—as if to show what a breeze could be generated by a butterfly's wing.

The "glittering things" Dexter wants—the trappings of wealth—cannot extend to Judy. Her beauty, like the beauty of the lake, is intoxicating but ultimately unsatisfying.

In the beginning of the short story "Winter Dreams," F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the weather to demonstrate Dexter Green’s state of mind. Dexter is hopeful in October and triumphant in November, but when “the long Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box,” he has “a feeling of profound melancholy.” In contrast to a Minnesota winter, the summer afternoon sky at the Sherry Island Golf Club is described as follows: “the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets.” This difference mirrors his attitude toward his life in both places: in Minnesota, his life is stagnant, and he is waiting for the future. At the Sherry Island Golf Club, he feels as though he is living the life he has been working toward.

Once Dexter has convinced himself that his relationship with Judy Jones will not work out, he meets and becomes engaged to Irene, and once again, “The Minnesota winter prolonged itself interminably, and it was almost May when the winds came soft and the snow ran down into Black Bear Lake at last.” When Dexter sees Judy again, he describes a warm wind blowing through the room.

Near the end of the story, Dexter lies down on his couch to process everything “and looked out the window at the New York sky-line into which the sun was sinking in dull lovely shades of pink and gold." He tries to recall what those summers at the golf club were like. Fitzgerald writes, "The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time."

Part of the way that the author uses setting in this story to create a pensive, melancholic mood is the way that seasons are used. From the title of the story it is clear that the seasons are crucial both to the development of the protagonist, Dexter Fletcher, and his ambitions in life, his "winter dreams." Note how from the first opening section of this great short story, the setting is used to create this melancholic mood which acts as a commentary on the hopelessness of Dexter's "winter dreams":

In the fall when the days became crisp and grey, and the long Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter' 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 often reminded him that the links should lie in enforced fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long season. It was dreary, to, that on the tees where the gay colours fluttered in summer there were now only the desolate sandboxes knee-deep in crusted ice.

Clearly, the setting here plays a powerful role in establishing what kind of character Dexter is, but also creates the pensive, melancholic tone that hints at the futility of Dexter's "winter dreams."