Sunday, November 9, 2008

Pretending and Daydreaming...or just Dreaming

In class we've been talking about dreams, reality, and imagination. And when we talk about dreams it might have mostly been about the kind you have when you are in your REM sleep. But what about pretending and day dreaming. I suppose many students know quite a bit about day dreaming. But both Alice (from Through the Looking Glass) and Lyra (from His Dark Materials ) have a different sorts of dreams that I wanted to highlight.

Instead of Alice suddenly seeing a white rabbit running by this time Alice decides to pretend. Page 156 she says, " 'Kitty, dear, let's pretend -' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favorite phrase 'Let's pretend.' " Later on Alice says about the looking-glass, "Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so we can get through. Why it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare!" And then Alice made it through the looking-glass. Was she dreaming, day-dreaming, or pretending? Maybe it started out as pretend and turned into daydreaming, which then led to a dream. And at the end of Through the Looking-glass when Alice is shaking the Red Queen it only turns out to be a kitten. So then was she dreaming or was she just pretending the whole thing. But then on Chpater XII she says she was woken by the kitty. It is all very ambiguous. But I suppose pretending is very much like day dreaming or even dreaming, because the impossible can happen. I used to pretend I was a ninja turtle when I was 4-years-old. It was physically impossible for me to turn into a ninja fighting turtle, but when pretending to be one and doing kicks and jumping off my couch, nothing was impossible and I became the Leonardo, one of the Ninja Turltles (turtle power!). But I was not dreaming, not sleep dreaming that is.

I also noticed this passage which connected to a part of Alice in Sunderland. Chapter XII of Through the Looking Glass Alice says, "Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear.....You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream of course - but then I was part of his dream too! Was it the Red King, Kitty?" And the last line before the poem Carroll speaks to the reader, "Which do you think it was?" Which reminded me of page 181 - 186 in the Sunderland graphic novel, some of which we discussed in class. Page 181, "life is but a dream," then page 182 the author wakes up from his dream, but then on page 186 he says, "Or is this your dream?" speaking to the audience. This question of who actually had the dream is popping up in both of these texts. Why does it matter? Is this a questioning of reality? Is anything ever really real? Or is it all enhanced and twisted through our dreams, imagination, and pretend.
-----------------------------------
I was re-reading The Golden Compass, and I have read it many times (and it is much more fun to read it in the context of this class along with other classes), but I don't remember reading this passage on page 284:

They spoke no more for some time. Lyra felt herself moving into kind of a trance beyond sleep and waking: a state of conscious dreaming, almost, in which she was dreaming that she was being carried by bears to a city in the stars.

She was going to share it with Iorek, but then she had to cross a crevasse. This may be a forshadowing. Or maybe it is how she is learning to see the other worlds, by day dreaming rather then focusing on reality which doesn't give way to the impossible being possible.
------------------------
Just a side note that I found very cool....page 244 when Lyra is talking to a prisoner at Svalbard, whom she thinks is crazy, and the prisoner says, "There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out ther is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know." I don't think he is all that crazy. But what I really found interesting was that in my Medieval Literature class Dr. Morgan stresses about all the overlapping meanings and allegories within Medieval drama, one key example that is found throughout all of the cycle plays is the microcosm and the macrocosom. Both words are derived from greek meaning. Read more about micro and macrocosom HERE. Both of which affect eachother, which would be the correspondence. When the microcosm is out of sync, the macrocosm is too. The microcosm is centered more on the earth and it's issues and the macrocosm is associated with the cosmos and the spheres around the earth. They represent this in the plays by tempests and intensely stormy out-of-place weather, it all calms down when Jesus is born because he saved us all right and everything is better now. I would continue on with this typology, but I fear I would spoil the book, so I will cease. Phillip Pullman used a medieval way of thinking in his modern text. It just goes to show all the influences he used and the genius behind his story, and I feel so sad because I probably miss most of the influences, allegories, etc.

No comments: