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The interpretation of dream
The interpretation of dream
Dream interpretation informative essay
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There are important distinctions between our experience of dreams and reality. In a dream, one mainly feels and observes without reasoning and also does not process thoughts logically. The reality, however, provides the ability to reason rationally and precisely doubt what can be viewed as superficial. However one can often fail to separate reality from dreams for between them lies an unbelievably miniscule line. Blinded by the desire to transform those dreams into a concrete reality, one can unmistakably be trapped in world unreservedly gone awry. In Edgar Allan Poe’s lyric and vivid poem, “The Sleeper”, the speaker is trapped in his own contorted mind and is having difficulties distinguishing reality from imagination. In this ballad, the readers are introduced to a man who he is plagued with the death of lover and after a number of years comes to terms with his loss. Love, memory and beauty are the ones cherished by the speaker for they can last beyond death and into the afterlife.
From the first person perspective, the speaker depicts a tranquil scene at midnight in the month of J...
“The Sleeper” uses Greek and Latin mythology to enhance the poem. This gives readers a tremendous level of insight on this poem. This helps readers perceive: how Irene had lived and died, what the griever is feeling, what the griever is trying to say and do, and grasp the underlying Greek and Latin lore. Because of the writing of Edgar Allan Poe, “The Sleeper” was written in dark romanticism and adds a supplementary twist to the mythologies.
Stephen King’s perception in “The Symbolic Language of Dreams” gave me a new, profound insight on dreams. On the other hand, his interpretations also made me realize how little is known about them and their significance to our lives.
It is important when discussing a dream in a novel to distinguish between the literary and psychological implications of the dream. The dream is obviously the functional product of the author's imagination, and hence, must serve a definite purpose in the work. If exami...
The vision of the mind is easily portrayed through the art of literature, painting a picture with the stroke of words. The natural inspiration that influences the creation of these works is derived from the life and the experiences of the creator. For some, these tales become stories and those stories become novels, but for one man it meant so much more. The works of Edgar Allan Poe became his life; he expressed every feeling and every moment of his existence through ink and paper. Poe involved his entire life in his writing, leaving no element of the story untouched by his trademark of a past. His work became so unique and unorthodox, yet it did not lack the attention it deserved. The American critic, Curtis Hidden Page, suggested that “the essence of his work is logic, logic entirely divorced from reality, and seeming to arise superior to reality” (Quinn 31). The foundation of Poe’s stories seems simple enough, but beneath the surface remains unanswered questions and undiscovered truths, which have yet to be uncovered. The people and experiences throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s lifetime have influenced various themes including: insanity, revenge, death, and guilt which can be distinguished through a collection of his works.
In the world of writing, Edgar Allan Poe has been remembered by many historians to be one of the first American writers to have a lasting impact on world literature. He was remembered by the French Symbolists at the time as a “Literary Precursor”, and is known for his dark and mysterious poems. However, one of the great mysteries that still lies within Edgar Allan Poe's life is his death, as nobody knows how he really died. Struggling through lifelong depression, Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849, but prior to his passing, laid the groundwork for a new genre of writing (“Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore”; “Edgar Allan Poe”).
“The unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them” (Tyson, 12). The love Ligeia and the author share have become too dark, and the darker it becomes, the stronger their love is. Throughout the short story “Ligeia” by Edgar Allen Poe, Freud’s psychoanalytical principles such as regression, the meaning behind death, and dream displacement all convey how protected the author is of the mention of Ligeia making their love unbreakable and enduring.
Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry is a fascinating study of Gothic fiction that deals with darkness towards death and emptiness. On the other side his love for his wife (Virginia Clemm) somehow shined through his poetry. Imagine reading his poems for the first time, one could think Poe was a man possessed by a dark mind. A person with such darkness, yet at the same time expressed his love for his lovely wife Virginia Clemm through his poetry. In addition, Edgar Allan Poe was a person who suffered from depression and melancholy, he expressed his feelings through his writings. According to Douglas Birch, “Poe himself wrote that ‘I fell in love with my melancholy.’” Let’s take a trip inside a poet’s mind and the life of Edgar Allan Poe, through his
So what is being undertaken here is a psychical study of man, an examination of the seasons of intellect, body and spirit, through which we all cycle. Also attempted is a portrayal of Poe's creative spirit. Though hyper-aware of his own tendency to perversity, what creative impetus must have been requisite for Edgar Poe to have penned poems and stories which so closely mirror the psychic patterns of his own mind!
The use of metaphor is essential to my thesis. Throughout the story particularly through pages 4, 5, and 6 the term “sleep-waker” is used six times. This term is defined as a state of mesmeric sleep; a state of altered consciousness. In Valdemar’s case his state was between life and death. However, I argue that when Valdemar was “successfully” placed in a “perfect state of mesmeric trance,” Valdemar was still dying (Poe 4). When questioned several times by P, Valdemar states, “Yes; - asleep now. Do not wake me! – let me die so!...no pain – I am dying…yes; still asleep – dying” (Poe 4,5). At one point after being placed in the mesmeric state P describes the appearance of Valdemar; his eyes rolling, “the pupils disappearing upward...and the circular hectic spots which, hitherto, had been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. I use this expression, because the suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath” (Poe 5). In lights of Poe’s choice of words, I ask, but what is death but the extinguishment of life? An extinguished candle is a metaphor of death. Poe’s words create the metaphorical image of a person who transitions from the dying state to the state of death with a “breath,” death is a moment, a
Freud, Sigmund. "The Interpretation of Dreams." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Julie Rivkin, and Michael Ryan, eds. Blackwell: Malden, Massachussets. 2000. 148
We all dream and wake up wondering, “what was that all about?” Can we ever really be sure? Some dreams are crazier than others and leave us questioning our own sanity, just like the speaker in this poem who dreams about forcibly taking advantage of a woman. The speaker in Robert Herrick’s 1653 poem, The Vine, uses the manifest and latent dream content and the battle between the id and superego to reveal his undisclosed desires.
A restorative theory claims that sleep is used to repair the body including the brain. Oswald suggests that slow wave sleep is when body repair occurs and REM sleep is when the brain is repaired. This is supported by the fact that there is an increase in the secretion of growth hormones during SWS. This could also explain why brain activity levels are high during REM sleep, and similar to when awake.
Brody says throughout her years she found herself to doze off at concerts as wells as napping in transportation vehicles and getting drowsy as she reads. She even admits to almost crashing when she was driving because she fell asleep. During last winter of that year Brody was pressured to diminish her sleeping time. This had led Brody to say “I found my brain running idle. My short-term memory was failing; I couldn't concentrate. I actually nodded off during a telephone interview, and by noon I was asleep on top of my computer keyboard.” Brody took a sleepiness quiz and failed it. The calculation showed that she was in sleep debt and that about 100 million others are in the same situation as her. Brody used David F. Dinges, a sleep specialist
Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams in Great Books of the Western World | 54 Chicago: Britannica, 1994.
The poem, “Insomnia”, written by Elizabeth Bishop, is about the thoughts that overtake one’s ability to fall asleep at night. Elizabeth Bishop includes the use of personification, symbols, and inversion in “Insomnia” to convey the realization of being in a dreamlike world that is different from the current society of Bishop’s time. The society of Elizabeth Bishop’s time was not able to recognize true love between two people and how their disapproval of people’s decisions may affect one’s ability to sleep at night. Bishop wrote to reflect her life and her time by using her moral sense and sharp wit. Elizabeth Bishop develops a somber tone to appeal to similar feelings and experiences to her audience.