Freudian Explanation for Significance of the Narrator's Dreams Eli Curran-Moore 11th Grade

Elias Curran-Moore

Freudian Explanation for Purpose of the Narrator's dreams in “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”

Various theories of why we dream range from practical applications like facilitating encoding memories for long term storage or working through problems in an abstract fashion, all the way to activation synthesis theory, which states dreams have no purpose or meaning at all, and are the result of random activity from the pons and brainstem. For anyone unfamiliar with Sigmund Freud, put simply, his theory emphasized dreams reveal our subconscious thoughts and innermost desires. According to Freud, dreams have both manifest content, the remembered story line, and latent content, the hidden meaning. In this theory, dreams are key to understanding inner conflict. This theory can be clearly understood in “Balzac”, as it is easily applied to the central unnamed protagonist. Particularly since the Narrator is confined to a small isolated area with little ties to the outside world and few outlets for his desires and true inclinations on the mountain in the midst of his oppressive reeducation, the Narrator works through these impulses by experiencing extremely vivid dreams. In Balzac and the Little Chinese...