Through Walter's Eyes

Why not! Why won't Mama give me the money to buy that store?  If we do invest it, we'll be able to buy a house ten times greater than the ones in Clybourne Park.  Ruth tells me she doesn't want God blaming her for all of the things customers might do drunk.  If she is giving me the money, how is the liquor store going to be on her ledger when she meets God?  Stupid old-fashioned mindsets.  Now with Ruth and the new baby, Mama is going to be even tighter about the money and will ignore the fact that the child won't be born for at least another 6 months.  Before then, I can get this family swimming in cash if she would allow me.  Beneatha will be able to go to medical school a thousand times if she wanted to, and I would let her; she needs to stop acting like if I have the money then she will never be able to go.  It's not like I don't want her to go, but I hate that she puts her education over the potential prosperity of the entire family.  I have Travis' education to worry about too, so it's not like I'm planning on throwing the money away!  I do not want to die telling my son "stories about how rich white people live..."(Hansberry 34).  Bobo and Willy are my only friends; isn't it truly shameful when a man's only friends are not even part of his family!

You didn't even look at it!

How Do I Include Moses?!

Today, the fictional stories we make up are still quite grounded in reality but run the risk of being reduced to stories of entertainment rather than stories of moral truth because of their specific nature.  Dexter in Winter Dreams is not the protagonist of a very heroic story.  Nothing in Winter Dreams on the scale of "Once upon time, there was Moses!  He helped a lot of people!" (I'm not necessarily claiming that was fictional, just comparing the level of heroism in both stories)  On the other hand, Dexter entertains Judy for a month and 3 days total and loses 5 years of life to unrequited love; on top of that, he wastes the time of his fiancee Irene Sheerer.  Once he realizes that everyone sees Judy as a average housewife, he "felt like getting very drunk" (Fitzgerald 957) until he saw pink elephants.  Very heroic indeed.  Fitzgerald's stories are can easily be reduced to simple pieces of interesting rhetoric that leave a lasting impression but do not affect us, the audience, directly.  Certain facets in Winter Dreams such as: Dexter's success, Judy's looks, and World War I, are not things that we can directly experience in day-to-day life nor are they things that we may want to experience.  Many times, the deepest meanings and applications to modern society found in Fitzgerald's stories require extensive logic and are at times stretchings of imagination.  Dexter's suffering can be taken to be as deliberate as it is truly agonizing because unrequited love, although being a realistic problem, is not one that is widespread nor considered serious.  Although the story of Moses is hard to emulate and apply to the modern day, its moral implications are still obvious and direct the lives of many whereas Dexter's story applies to a minority of people unlucky in love.

Better than Dexter.