Revisited

            
             The depression was an era of extremes. A person was more than likely extremely poor, or in the lucky upper 1% that was extremely wealthy. The middle class was virtually not existent. All of these income groups, including those characterized in our three stories, wanted money because it supposedly brought happiness, but were actually struggling to cling to the intangible, unreachable feeling of love. If money leads to love, Dexter Green has bought it a thousand times over. He wanted not association with the glittering things and glittering people [but] the glittering things themselves" even if they come in the shape of an object, a person, a house, a manner, or as simple as a life (Fitzgerald Dreams 58). He is still the "proud, desirous little boy" of his youth (Dreams 64). This reincarnation of the Victorian gilded age reinstates the fact those things that look of worth might really be empty of value inside. This glittering hollowed thing for Dexter Green appears as Judy Jones. He wants her; he longs for her because he has everything else. "Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it;" just another trophy on his shelf, and seemingly the gift one might give a person who has everything (Dreams 58). He is desperate for the lifestyle, the glittering things, and belonging. Judy, herself, is a symbol of wealth and to men, the ideal of love. She has proper breeding, incredible beauty, popularity, and above of all, lots of money. Though she is what men want to use as an example of love, she can not love. Rather, she is merely the idea of love and evidently the irony of love. She has no human capacity for it for she is only playing the game to prove that she can "[make] men conscious to the highest degree of her physical loveliness" and make them fall in love with her in an instant (Dreams 65). Judy had fun with men and "was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm" (Dreams 61-2).