Dreams

[timeripple]

Narratology has been much on my mind these past few months, and recently it helped me figure out a way to verbalize something that's been needling at me.

Often when people talk about dreams, they'll say "I dreamed I did such-and-such".

This sounds a lot like first-person narration. And the dreamer claims to perform actions and react to situations as if she herself inhabits the dream-world.

I almost never dream in first person. And I almost never inhabit a dream completely. Rather, for me, dreaming is like reading. I may get caught up in the content, but there's always a distance between conscious-me and that content.

I tend to dream in variably-distanced third person-- that is, in gradations between third person limited and third person omniscient, and always with the (sub?)consciousness that the dream-events and dream-people inhabit a constructed world. Sometimes I identify very closely with a particular character, experiencing dream-events through his or her eyes. A focalizing character who is also the focalizee, both instrument and object of my gaze. Sometimes I character-hop-- like a novel with alternating-POV chapters. Sometimes the focalization is more distant, and the dream is more like an omniscient narrative: I watch the dream knowing I'm watching. But even when the sense of identification is very close, I always know on some level that what I'm experiencing is a fabrication, a construction; a narrative of a different order than waking life.



...maybe I should get some sleep now.

Comments

[cadragongirl.livejournal.com]

that's kinda weird, since most of my dreams seem very real. every once in a while i'll get the out-of-body, realization that i'm in a dream, but not too often. had one last night, though, because i went back to "fix" something in the dream. hmmmm....

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. That's kind of cool! Even when I'm subconsciously aware that it's a dream, there's the same kind of powerlessness that goes with reading-- I can be involved in the content to varying extents, but I don't control it.