Author Topic: Dream Interpretation  (Read 941559 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #690 on: January 13, 2020, 01:52:44 pm »
Sometimes dreams come in series, and then they start to take on the aspect of portents. Two that I had recently seem to go together. In the first, my daughter wanted to drive but was an inexperienced teenager so we made her and my son get in the back seat. Then, as my ex and I prepared to get in front, the car started rolling forward. We had to make a jump for it, and I got tangled in a heavy coat that I had thrown into the passenger seat ahead of me. My ex, miraculously, had sailed into the driver's seat and we were going down the shoulder of the road very fast and it was bumpy.

The second dream was just that I was trying to put on a T-shirt but I couldn't get my arms through the holes, so it was more like a strait-jacket.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline serious crayons

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 22,711
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #691 on: January 13, 2020, 08:19:49 pm »
Sometimes dreams come in series, and then they start to take on the aspect of portents. Two that I had recently seem to go together. In the first, my daughter wanted to drive but was an inexperienced teenager so we made her and my son get in the back seat. Then, as my ex and I prepared to get in front, the car started rolling forward. We had to make a jump for it, and I got tangled in a heavy coat that I had thrown into the passenger seat ahead of me. My ex, miraculously, had sailed into the driver's seat and we were going down the shoulder of the road very fast and it was bumpy.

The second dream was just that I was trying to put on a T-shirt but I couldn't get my arms through the holes, so it was more like a strait-jacket.

I have the exact same T-shirt dream every night! Oh no, wait -- that's just what happens to me when I wake up in the middle of the night feeling hot and change from a waffle shirt into a T-shirt in the dark.

If you believe in dreams as portents (I don't, personally, but can understand why some people do and would never dispute it, just like I never dispute someone's religion or any other belief system) (unless it has to do with current politics, in which case ...  >:( >:( >:( ), have you ever read The White Hotel? It's all about dreams. And one of the characters is a fictionalized Freud, for that matter (whom we recently spoke of in the GtPPoT thread). It takes place in the early 1900s. You might find it gripping and interesting.

It was published in 1981 (per Wikipedia) was critically acclaimed and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  It's well written and executed with a fascinating premise, unexpected turns in the story, well-constructed plot, some historical info. So it has all that going for it. Many, many people have liked it.

But I can't recommend it unreservedly. I enjoyed much of it very much, found it so engaging I could hardly stop reading it ... but ultimately I found it so disturbing I wound up sorry I'd read it. Similar to the way I was sorry I saw the movies Platoon, Leaving Las Vegas and Requiem for a Dream. If you don't like that feeling, beware.

It's not like I have to come out of a movie whistling a happy tune. (Duh, when you consider the ending of the movie that brought us all here!) But sad is one thing and disturbed is another.

Writing this, I googled it and found a list of the 100 most disturbing books ever. I went to the list and The White Hotel wasn't on it -- someone in the comments, disputing ones on the list, said it should include The White Hotel. I skimmed the list of 100 and I had read and enjoyed many of them and loved some of them (A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Handmaid's Tale, Room, Gone Girl, The Stand, Carrie, Wuthering Heights (!)). So I don't think I'm that easily disturbed. Though I know better than to read American Psycho, The Road or Lord of the Flies.




Offline Jeff Wrangler

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,165
  • "He somebody you cowboy'd with?"
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #692 on: January 14, 2020, 09:48:49 am »
Definitely skip Lord of the Flies. I had to read that in junior high school. I won't say it disturbed me. I just didn't like it.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 22,711
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #693 on: January 14, 2020, 10:34:13 am »
Definitely skip Lord of the Flies. I had to read that in junior high school. I won't say it disturbed me. I just didn't like it.

Yeah, I feel like I know enough about the plot that I don't have to do the actual reading.


Offline Jeff Wrangler

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,165
  • "He somebody you cowboy'd with?"
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #694 on: January 14, 2020, 12:42:21 pm »
Yeah, I feel like I know enough about the plot that I don't have to do the actual reading.

I know the title is a sort-of Biblical reference, as "Lord of the Flies" is a title for Beelzebub, but I can remember not getting how the title related to the plot.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #695 on: January 14, 2020, 05:14:33 pm »
Caution, disturbing image ahead



Didn't they put the dead pig's head on a stake, where it attracted flies, and they called it Lord of the Flies and tried to get other boys to worship it?
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,165
  • "He somebody you cowboy'd with?"
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #696 on: January 14, 2020, 07:12:40 pm »
Caution, disturbing image ahead



Didn't they put the dead pig's head on a stake, where it attracted flies, and they called it Lord of the Flies and tried to get other boys to worship it?

I couldn't say. It's now almost 50 years since I read it.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 22,711
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #697 on: January 14, 2020, 11:06:35 pm »
Didn't they put the dead pig's head on a stake, where it attracted flies, and they called it Lord of the Flies and tried to get other boys to worship it?

Exactly. I know that much. I think some boys get stranded on a desert island or something and the book is about how quickly human civilization can break down into brutality and savagery or something like that.

If "Lord of the Flies" is another name for Beelzebub, it's clever word play! Because the pig/flies part is definitely part of the plot.

Speaking of heads on stakes, did anyone read the New Yorker piece that ran sometime around Thanksgiving debunking all the myths of the mostly fictional first Thanksgiving? That piece talked about this peacekeeping chief who showed up at the first "Thanksgiving." The gathering was apparently not nearly as warm and merry as the story that was concocted centuries later and that kids now learn in school. But apparently Indians and settlers mingled peaceably, and the Indians reportedly showed at least an apparent interest in getting along. Needless to say, that didn't work out. The son of that chief, the one who attended the first Thanksgiving, his head stood on a spike outside a British fortress for many years.








Offline Jeff Wrangler

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,165
  • "He somebody you cowboy'd with?"
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #698 on: January 15, 2020, 09:57:50 am »
Exactly. I know that much. I think some boys get stranded on a desert island or something and the book is about how quickly human civilization can break down into brutality and savagery or something like that.

That's what I remember of it. Plus, one of the boys is nicknamed "Piggy."


"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 22,711
Re: Dream Interpretation
« Reply #699 on: January 15, 2020, 09:44:16 pm »
I guess the nature of the social breakdown in the book reminds me of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Are you all familiar with it, and if so did you know it's been pretty thoroughly debunked?