The Wrapped Golf Ball A Marxist Literary Criticism Essay

The philosopher Karl Marx once said, â€Å"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness† (Marx). Marx argues that social circumstances determine one’s value and belief. Therefore, in his short story â€Å"Winter Dreams†, F. Scott Fitzgerald supports this Marxist theory by exposing that the proletariat is oppressed by the bourgeoisie’s ideology that the goal of life lies in status and material success, wrongly leading the middle-class to pursue inappropriate goals and ultimately to lose personal identity as developed through vivid imagery, starting with depicting a proletarian’s dream, followed by his success and transformation by a materialist, and ending†¦show more content†¦Dexter idolizes those wealthy men and does everything possible to resemble rich men. For example, he asks the best tailor in America to make a suit for him. In sum, he becom es addicted to social prestige since he believes that happiness lies in it. The satisfaction that Dexter feels at becoming socio-economically advantageous leads him to pursue unattainable goals, which transform him into someone that he does no more recognize. To begin with, when Dexter returns to the Sherry Island Golf Club, he tries to â€Å"catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his present and his past† (34). Although he only makes his first big success at that moment, he already misses the young Dexter who innocently believes that money is the key to every problem. The melancholy of this sentence indicates that he has not yet found happiness in his first success, thus leading him to pursue more challenging goals. The gap between his past and his present is even extended after he encounters Judy Jones. Before the adult Judy appears on the lake where Dexter and her first meet, Fitzgerald employs a multitude of words associated with sun, such as â€Å"shining†, â€Å"lights†, â€Å"gleaming†, and â€Å"for once, he was magnificently attuned to life and that everything