Dreams are often the subject of novels; the key to a character's deeper promptings; the means by which an author sets a tone or creates a theme underlying his or her fiction, or expresses an intangible poetic concept. Take a peek at how dreams appear in literature....and, if you know of other literary dreams, contact The Dream Tree.
To read dreams of celebrated artists, writers, scientists and others whose works or lives have had an impact on the collective, visit the Famous Dreams page. To read quotes on dreams and their meanings to different men and women throughout history, visit the Thoughts on Dreams page
"When
Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself
changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard
as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown
belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide
off completely, could barely cling. His many legs pitiifully thin compared
with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.
"What's happened to me?" he thought. IT WAS NO DREAM." Franz Kafka,
Metamorphosis.
"I
dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it
was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept on to my lap again, clutched
at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it is my own,
perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face,
and it was horrible....but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one's
life in one's arms. Arthur Miller, After
the Fall.
"You
said 'They're harmless dreamers and they're loved by the people.' 'What,'
I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what' I asked you, 'is harmless
about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember
their dreams.'" Camino
Real. Tennessee Williams
"A
man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If
he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do,
he drowns." Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Lord
Jim.
"A
beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay in the
center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the whole
room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the
chimney." Ralph Ellison, Invisible
Man, 1952.
Our
life is two-fold: Sleep hath it's own world /A boundary between the things
misnamed / Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world / And a Wide realm
of wild reality. / And dreams in their development have breath, / And tears,
and tortures, and the touch of joy; / They leave a weight upon our waking
thoughts, / They take a weight from off our waking toils, / They do divide
our being; they become / A portion of ourselves as of time, / And look like
heralds of eternity; / They pass like spirits of the past, -- they speak /
Like Sybils of the future; they have power / the tyranny of pleasure and of
pain; / They make us what we were not what they will, / And shake us with
the vision that's gone by, / The dread of vanish'd shadows Are they so? /
Is not the past all shadow? -- What are they? / Creations of the mind? The
mind can make / Substance, and people planets of its own / With beings brighter
than have been, and give | A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."
Lord Byron, from The Dream, 1816
"I'll
dreamt that I'll dweath mid warblers' walls when throstles and choughs to
my sigh hiehied" James Joyce, Finnegan's
Wake, 1939
"While
hollering and breathing so long so deep / Memory came on and dove down to
my sleep / Dreaming this memory of space all around / Silence becomes breath
becomes thought becomes sound." John Hardee, 1997
"Many's
the long night I've dreamed of cheese toasted, mostly." Robert Louis
Stevenson, Treasure
Island, 1883.
"A
morning later, Nancy described her first dream, the first remembered dream
of her life. She and Judy Thorne were on a screened porch, catching ladybugs.
Judy caught one with one spot on its back and showed
it to Nancy. Nancy caught one with two spots and showed it to Judy. Then Judy
caught one with three spots and Nancy one with four. Because (the child explained)
the dots showed how old the ladybugs were. She told this dream to her mother,
who had her repeat it to her father at breakfast. Piet was moved, beholding
his daughter launched intoanother dimension of life. Like school. He was touched
by her tiny stock of imagery the screened porch (neither they nor the Thornes
had one; who?), the ladybugs (with turtles the most toylike of creatures),
the mysterious power of numbers, that generates space and time. Piet saw down
a long amplifying corridor of her dreams, and wanted to hear her tell them,
to grow older with her, to shelter her forever." John Updike, Couples,
1968.
"Hold
your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple. 'I won't!' said Alice. 'Off
with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. 'Who
cares for you?' said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time).
'You're nothing but a pack of cards!' At this the whole pack rose up into
the air, and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of
fright and half of anger, and tired to beat them off, and found herself lying
on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing
away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
'Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister. 'Why, what a long sleep you've had!'
So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what
a wonderful dream it had been. Lewis Carroll, Alice's
Adventure in Wonderland, 1865
"Last
night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron
gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was
barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my
dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the
rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came
from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like
all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed
like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front
of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was
aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive
that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was
only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I
realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again, and, little
by little, in her stealthy, insidious way, had encroached upon the drive with
long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had
triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the orders of
the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another,
their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my
head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees
that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek
by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth,
along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered surely the
miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to
a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I cam upon
it suddenly There was Manderley secretive and silent as it had always been,
the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows
reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect
symmetry of those walls nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand."
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca,
1938.
"To
sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death
what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil" Shakespeare,
Hamlet
'I
sometimes dream of devils. It's night, I'm in my room, and suddenly there
are devils everywhere. In all the corners and under the table, and they open
doors, and behind the doors there are crowds of them, and they all want to
come in and seize me. And they are already coming near and taking hold of
me, But suddenly I cross myself and they draw back, they are afraid, only
they don't go away, but stand near the door and in the corners, waiting. And
then I'm suddenly overcome by a desire to begin cursing God in a loud voice,
and I begin cursing him and they all rush at me again in a crowd, they're
so pleased, and they're again about to lay hands on me and I cross myself
again and they draw back at once. It's great fun. Oh, it takes my breath away."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The
Brothers Karamazov, 1880.
"Captain
Flume slept like a log most nights and merely DREAMED he was awake. So convincing
were these dreams of lying awake that he awoke from them each morning in complete
exhaustion and fell right back to sleep." Joseph Heller, Catch-22,
1961.
"All
dreams of the soul/End in a beautiful man's or woman's body." W.B. Yeats,
The Phases of the Moon, 1919.
Since
he weighs nothing / Even the stoutest dreamer / Can fly without wings. W.H.
Auden, from Thanksgiving for a Habitat, 1966.
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