"That was always my experience-- a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton . . However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works"(Brucolli). F. Scott Fitzgerald noticeably uses this life experience in a definite two of his works. Fitzgerald considered his short story, "Winter Dreams- a first draft for The Great Gatsby for several reasons such as the similarities between James Gatsby and Dexter Green, Daisy Buchanan and Judy Jones, and the themes of love and money. The similarities between the short narrative and the novel are strikingly parallel. It seems almost as if Fitzgerald wrote one to complement the other. The characters in both stories are exceptionally similar in numerous aspects; also, the themes of love and money are very evident in both works. .
Gatsby and Dexter are the two characters in the novel that possibly have the most in common. Dexter and Gatsby live tremendously comparable lives in the stories regarding social class, background, and their love lives. Both characters grow up in the west living with families who do not have large quantities of wealth. Also, both characters try to use wealth to erase their pasts. Gatsby even goes to the extent of altering his name from James Gatz to James Gatsby. What brings these two even closer is their search for love that is just out of their reach. While Gatsby longs for Daisy, Dexter strives for Judy's affection. Gatsby's longing is revealed to the reader several times throughout the novel. There is perhaps no greater instance of this in the novel then when Gatsby is outside stretching his arms toward the green light at the edge of Daisy's pier:.
He [stretches] out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she made lovely for him. But it [is] all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he [knows] that he [has lost] part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.