Kimo Gray
10.07.08
Hamilton Salsich
English 9

Love, Loss, Gain, and Music
A comparative Essay

Have you ever heard the saying, “You don’t know what you have in life until it is gone?” Life can be hard, and we all know this, we all face our personal losses and gains every day. But two people who know how to live life’s hard times are Dexter Greene, a very successful young man who invested his heart in a woman who was almost as untouchable as a ghost, and Sonny, a run-of-the-mil man from Harlem, whose life was messed up by drugs. Those these two characters never met, if they had, there would have been a lot of talk about the losses and gains in both “Winters Dreams” and “Sonny’s Blues.”
Winters dreams is a story of a man who wasted two years of his life chasing after the same woman who hurt him again and again, Judy Jones. It seems like all love stories involve tragic loss and devastating heartbreak, but this story had that except about 5 dozen times. It seems like every time Dexter wanted to be with Judy, a pretty girl who was often with many different men, she would keep on hurting him. Their destructive relationship lasted on and on, but eventually the repetitive loss became too much for Dexter, and he tried to move on. Ironically, after letting go of Judy, he became engaged to another woman, but with his new fiancé he did not gain the passion and fire that Judy carried about with her. Suddenly Judy reenters the picture, and destroys Dexter’s life once again, splitting him up with his fiancé. In an effort to hide from his pain, Dexter flees to the military. Years later, having finally moved on, his friend starts telling him about the new, less fiery, now tamed housewife version of Judy Jones, much to Dexter’s chagrin. In that moment his picture of Judy Jones is destroyed, and he realizes that all his winter de=reams had come true, but in leading himself to live an imaginary vision of Judy Jones prevented him from enjoying his dreams, turning his life into “the story of a man who gets nearly everything he wants at the cost of nearly everything that made it worth wanting.” (Burhans Jr.) Dexter is no longer at peace with his dreams, as there was always one that could never been fulfilled.
Another soul who has been damaged in more ways than one is Sunny, a poor Harlem man whose life was once destroyed by drugs. On his return from Jail, his brother, who narrates the story, grudgingly decides to take him in, so that he can help Sunny to be normal. But Sonny gains a new love, music. He fills his brother’s house with the sounds of his pain, his suffering, but the brother won’t listen to Sonny. Eventually Sonny leaves, as he feels he has lost his brothers love. Multiple times they try to reconcile, but Sonny’s brother doesn’t understand that living without suffering is impossible. Sonny is similar to Dexter in the sense that they both lost loved ones; Dexter lost Judy, while Sonny lost his brother. Finally, in a desperate reach out to his brother, Sonny invites him to listen to him play at the club. There, through the cool jazz and smooth tunes Sonny’s brother is able to feel that intense appreciation, and feels Sonny’s Blues. The story ends there, but that does not mean that this inspiring story ends without one more gift- a gift of friendship and understanding between the two brothers.
It’s true that sometimes our life can seem less than ideal, but we can always try to find some way to make the best of it. Be it a simple struggling homework assignment, or an argument worth a friend, just remember Sonny’s patience and understanding, Dexter’s determination, and channel that indefinable peace, one that only count their losses, so that more gains will come in the future. As Winston Churchill once said, Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.”



Burhans , Clinton S., Jr.. "Winter Dreams: ‘‘Magnificently Attune to Life’’: The Value of ‘‘Winter Dreams’’" Short Stories for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 15. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 7 October 2008.
http://www.enotes.com/winter-dreams/magnificently-attune-life-value-winter-dreams