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.