From Sleep Unbound Sparknotes

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Creating Illusions to Find Hope in From Sleep Unbound Kevin Zhao Why is it that when individuals are faced with conflict, they often do not become demoralized by it but instead gain the confidence to overcome it? In the novel From Sleep Unbound by Andree Chedid, the author answers this question through the character Samya and the conflict she faces. Andree Chedid conveys an idea through Samya that individuals create an illusion of choice during hardships which allow them an alternate path to overcoming a conflict in their lives. By temporarily escaping reality, an individual sides with illusions to gain hope in times of hardship. From using this hope, an individual is able to isolate themselves from their weaknesses in reality and in turn, …show more content…

The repetition of surrounding walls around Samya conveys the idea that Samya is trapped. An example shown in the text is where Samya is in boarding school through lines “The veil, the black stockings, the walls. I was suffocating …yet I followed a strange fear. So I followed my own footsteps.” (Page 24) From this description, it seems that Samya tries to find another way to avoid the walls by following “a strange fear” that leads her towards her own decisions. It appears that Samya “follows in her own footsteps” by first choosing to creating an illusionary path for herself out of fear and then following that path. As Samya follows a path she created for herself, she finds hope in “following in her own footsteps” even when her footsteps are unclear as to where they lead. The passage surrounded walls are again mentioned in the text when Samya says that “We advanced in a narrow file. The walls rose before us; they would never stop rising before us”. (Page 24) The author suggests that as Samya finds hope in following her own footsteps, she develops her own confidence even in her boarding school where she is exposed by others directing her path using walls. Samya creates purpose from the hope of following her own path during her suffocation at boarding school to develop to be more confident in herself through isolation from

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