In the morning dawn of a cool spring day, the sky is clear and a gentle breeze carries dandelions in the air. As the sun is rising, its warm rays spread gently over the flower-covered hills. Butterflies scatter throughout the green meadow as they are softly kissing each flower. The air is fresh and filled with sounds of birds and a rooster calling out in the morning. These were the images that Ching Li vividly experienced in her mind. These are the images she wished could dream without waking up for a few hours at least. Ching Li is an 18 years old, journalism college student, and was born in a small town in the city of Beijing. She is the only daughter of a rice farmer and a seamstress. Her dream is to become a successful travel writer and help her parents. Unfortunately she has been suffering from insomnia for a week. It did not matter at what time of the day or night, she could not help but cry from the exhaustion due to lack of sleep. Every night she tossed and turned and could not seem to fall asleep. Her mind is filled with different images and thoughts, with no rest in between. Ching Li thinks of ways of falling asleep, even if it means for her to get physically tired. Ching Li would turn on her bed facing the wall, and start counting the roses in the wallpaper design. There are 700 roses of all sizes and colors in her wall. As she tossed and turned to the other side, she saw a wall full of shelves, filled with all kinds of dolls neatly placed arranged in order of size. She would look at each doll one by one and observe every intricate detail from head to toe. Each doll had a special meaning. Some were given at her birthday, and some on Christmas. Ching Li is crying and wondering why is this happening to her now, as she i... ... middle of paper ... ...Museum, admiring Da Vinci’s portrait of Madonna and Child with St. Anne. In front of the painting in the floor she sees the rest of her dolls leaning against the wall. Ching Li starts to sweat and breathe heavily and suddenly wakes up. Not sure if it was a dream or if this really happened at all. She doesn’t remember if she was suffering from insomnia and if she really wrote on the walls. As she turns and looks at the walls, she sees that they are blank with no writing. She lets out a deep sigh, as if to say it was all a dream. She lies back down and is facing the wall with the shelves and notices that all of her dolls are dirty with colored chalk. Ching Li is wondering if this was all a dream. Did she really have insomnia? Did she really write a novel on the walls? How did the dolls get colored chalk on their faces and clothes? No one will ever know…but her dolls.
The central characters in both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and A Doll’s House are fully aware of their niche in society. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband believes her illness to be a slight depression, and although she states "personally, I disagree with their ideas,” she knows she must acquiesce their requests anyway (Gilman 1). She says, “What is one to do?” (Gilman 1) The narrator continues to follow her husband’s ideals, although she knows them to be incorrect. She feels trapped in her relationship with her husband, as she has no free will and must stay in the nursery all day. She projects these feelings of entrapment onto the yellow wallpaper. She sees a complex and frustrating pattern, and hidden in the pattern are herself and othe...
A common definition of dreams according to “Patterns for College Writing” is “the symbolic representation of mental states”, but this sparse definition does not begin to encompass the complex mechanisms behind dreams and its effects on human culture around the globe. Dreams have long been the topics of folklore and urban legends. Since human beginnings, people have sought to uncover the origin of dreams. The ancient Greeks believed dreams came from the God Oneiroi. The Chinese believes that dreams happened when the hun or spirit leaves the body for the land of the dead. The Ishi Indians believed that dreams were sacred messages from the Gods. Yet even now, with the current technological and intellectual advancements, scientists and psychoanalysts have still to find the true reasons and meanings of these dreams. Some argue that dreams are the products of overactive subconscious minds while others argue that dreams are solely randomized emotions from the limbic system during sleep. Despite these contrasting theories, the truth of the matter is that the topic of dreams and the reasons behind them remain a mystery.
The inner self of humans is a confusing and intriguing place, the unconscious mind reigns supreme here controlling the flow of information and selectively filtering it (Kluners 2014) as it becomes a conscious thought, a deeper understanding of the unconscious mind, its defenses, and a mechanisms such as a dream by which we can peer into the unconscious mind will help one to grow personally, (Newirth 2014) and to unlock the immense creativity (Perera 2013) and potential waiting to be unleashed.
Have you ever wondered why you dream and how you can sometimes direct it? Maybe you have wondered if your dream has any true meaning to it. You are not the only person who has these questions. These questions come up a lot when psychologists discuss the topic of dreaming. The topic of dreams and lucid dreaming has been around for hundreds of years. There have been many books and journals solely devoted to dreams and how they affect people today. The goal for this paper is to answer and explain the questions (Why do you dream? Can you direct your dreams? And do dreams have meanings?) using journals, books, and other resources written by widely known psychologists such as Sigmund Freud.
Dreams have long been a topic of intrigue for artists of all forms. In the literary sense, authors have explored the world of dreams in a plethora of manners, ranging from depicting nonsensical, imaginary worlds to crafting scenes that depict the inner workings of the subconscious mind. In both Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Artist of the Beautiful, the world of dreams is explored through the eyes and thoughts of two curious characters. While Carroll exposes the illogical, absurd elements present in dreams, Hawthorne focuses on the personal, meaningful aspects existing in subconscious thoughts.
In the girls’ section there were lots of dolls, pink themed tricycles and scooters, princess themed Lego castles, plushy pink dolls, Cabbage Patch babies, and plenty of doll strollers. The shelves in the aisles that contained these princess dolls and toys were pink. They had...
As I enter the Gioconda and Joseph King Gallery at the Norton Museum of Art the first thing that Caught my attention was a painting measuring approximately at 4 ft. by 10 ft. on the side wall in a well- light area. As I further examine the painting the first thing I notice is that it has super realism. It also has color, texture, implied space, stopped time, and that it is a representational piece. The foreign man sitting on the chair next to a bed has a disturbed look on his face and is deep into his own thoughts. It’s as if someone he loved dearly just experienced a tragic and untimely death. He is in early depression. I could feel the pain depicted in his eyes. A book titled The Unquiet Grave lying open on the floor by the unmade bed suggesting something is left unresolved. The scattered photos and papers by the bedside cause redintegration. The picture of Medusa’s head screaming on the headboard is a silent scream filled with anger and pain, yet it cannot be heard. I feel as if I am in the one sitting in the chair and I can feel the anger, and regret.
Signs of the depth of the narrator's mental illness are presented early in the story. The woman starts innocently enough with studying the patterns of the paper but soon starts to see grotesque images in it, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a...
In this paper I hope to open a window to the vast and mysterious world of dreaming. To most people, information about dreams isn’t common knowledge. In researching this subject though, I found that everybody has and reacts to dreams, which are vital to your mental health. You will also find how you can affect your dreams and how they affect you.
Austin based filmmaker Richard Linklater recently released a movie that is a dream. By that I mean both that it is about a dream, and that it is dreamlike. "Waking Life" received mixed reviews, but it also sparked new interest in an idea that has actually been around a long time: lucid dreaming. In this paper I intend to explore the concept of lucidity in dreams, and to concentrate on the research of Stanford University's Stephen LaBerge, who has used lucid dreaming as a tool to better understand the biological phenomena of sleep and dreams.
Dreams play a major role in the story, and, throughout the history of literature, sleep has often been consid...
II. (Introduce Topic) Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to understand the different functions of the human body, how we move, talk, and even act. Many of these physiological behaviors have been explained to some extent. However, one area of the human body that has baffled researchers, is that of the mind. Many things that go on inside the mind that don’t make sense, and serves no real explanation as to why or how things happen. One of the most fascinating and mysterious sections of psychology is that of dreaming. Even though there are numerous theories about dreams; whomever you are, wherever you live, you will dream. Whether it's a good dream or a nightmare is up to your mind, but there must be some reasoning behind dreams, right?
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "A Doll’s House." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 4th ed. New York, N.Y. Longman/Pearson, 2008. 881-939. Print
Sleep is an integral part of life, but differs from other states of reduced consciousness in that the brain is still somewhat active. Sleep is an “altered state of consciousness, [with the sleeper losing] substantial contact with the external world.” (Gazzaniga, M., & Heatherton, T., 2016). Nonetheless, brain activity has an extensive role in the creation of “sleep”, generating two distinct types - slow-wave sleep, also referred to as deep sleep, and rapid eye movement, also called the dreaming stage. Comprised of five stages, sleep is a complex state of mind, also consisting of patterns known as circadian rhythms. Operating as a behavior, sleep alters to suit our bodily needs, and informs us of such needs through an intricate network of nerves. Furthermore, without obtaining an ideal amount of sleep, problems can arise that may affect one’s wellbeing. Detailed research and studies previously conducted on the subject of sleep allows the accumulation of information to be
While we sleep, our brains are able to play out scenes in our mind through our dreams. However, dreaming does not fully expose our cognitive potential. We are only able to watch those scenes while dreaming rather than fully participate. Lucid dreaming gives us not only the ability to participate in our dreams, but allows us to determine what will happen in them and manipulate the entire plot. Lucid dreaming is defined as “the experience of dreaming with consciousness and awareness that one is dreaming (Melton 940).” For a dream to be lucid, the dreamer must realize that they are not in reality or the physical world, but that they are in a dream. Once this realization occurs, the dreamer is able to do whatever they want and manipulate the plot of the dream. The idea of lucid dreaming has existed since the eighth century when Tibetan Buddhists practiced forms of yoga designed to remain fully conscious during a dreaming state (LaBerge, 21). It wasn’t until the 1900’s that scientists began to study sleep cycles and to determine how they affected dreaming and lucidity. These studies led to the development of techniques that would allow people to lucid dream on demand in order for scientists to further study lucidity. Researchers were able to use these techniques and apply them to therapies and treatments for patients with sleeping disorders in an attempt to use lucid dreaming to improve their sleep quality. While further benefits of lucid dreaming are still being studied, current research shows that it can be a useful skill to develop and can be a therapeutic tool for people suffering from sleep disorders.