Is Dreaming and Sleeping the Same?
"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I came to a place where there was a den. There I lay down to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed a dream."
This great and simple opening of The Pilgrim’s Progress may tell us that in the late 1600s Bunyan is trying to talk about his dream to the public to get his message through to the people. Before I get into this essay I need to clear out the true meaning of Dreaming and Sleeping. Sleeping is when your body is resting and mostly you are unaware of your surroundings. In sleeping state there is no desire in particular emotions. Dreaming happens when you're sleeping, It's basically a fake reality. Dreaming happens when a series of events in our awaken life is taking place, but we are denying that it is. Most of the time dreaming is like a message to your soul about what you're denying and trying to say in your awake state.
Everyone has their own definition and perspective about dreaming and sleeping. Bunyan's perspective about dreaming is that in dreaming you see God's truth and you communicate directly to God as we see in the book Pilgrimage Progress (which is all a dream). Throughout the text, he reminds the reader that all of this he knows to be true precisely because he dreamed it.The fact that a dream happens only in a person's mind highlights the importance of the internal and personal aspect of the whole pilgrimage. Bunyan describes sleeping, on the other hand, as blindness to God's truth. By blindness I mean the way everything got slowed down. An example is when Christian sleeps in the arbor and when he wakes up he realizes that it's late and he needs to continue his journey, while walking he notices that he has lost his certificate....
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...asleep sleep brings him a vision of spiritual improvement. He cannot dream without sleeping. Bunyan is dreaming about heaven, he longs for it to come true, and so that people can know about it that's why he wrote this book.
In conclusion, sleeping and dreaming are two very different things. Sleeping and dreaming are the most widely used symbols in the book. Actually, the story starts with the dream of the author. Sleeping is mostly perceived as sin and potential danger for the pilgrims on their journey to the Celestial City. It is a kind of blindness towards the God whereas dreaming is accepted as the direct relationship to the God. Basically in Pilgrim's Progress Sleeping is the potential danger to reach salvation and to the Celestial City. It is more like a spiritual disaster. When pilgrims sleep they lose their control and their direction to the Celestial City.
Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer about a young mans names Chris McCandless who's dream which become reality, but then ends up in a tragedy. Jon Krakauer is a very unique author which his story creates many emotional and valuable lesson throughout the story.
A New Kind of Dreaming is a novel written by Anthony Eaton, about a teenage boy, Jamie Riley, being referred to rural Western Australia where, he meets new friends, enemies and also discovers a shocking secret about the towns head police officer. The pressure to find out the secret puts Jamie in a great deal of trouble, from being frightened by the police, blamed for a fire and vandalism offences and even going missing in the desert. The characters have authority or are defenceless.
Various people have different beliefs on the importance of having dreams The speaker in “Kitchenette Building,” by Gwendolyn Brooks and Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry both have contrasting views on the significance of dreams. In the poem “Kitchenette Building,” the speaker discusses how arduous it is for a dream to survive the hardships and harsh realities of life in a cramped kitchenette
In Of Mice and Men, it seems an incontrovertible law of nature that dreams should go unfulfilled. From George and Lennie’s ranch to Curley’s wife’s stardom, the characters’ most cherished aspirations repeatedly fail to materialize. However, the fact that they do dream—often long after the possibility of realizing those dreams has vanished—suggests that dreaming serves a purpose in their lives. What the characters ultimately fail to see is that, in Steinbeck’s harsh world, dreams are not only a source of happiness but a source of misery as well.
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.
The American Dream has long been thought the pinnacle idea of American society. The idea that anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or financial status, could rise from the depths and become anything they wanted to be with no more than hard work and determination has attracted people from all around the world. Two writers from America’s past, however, have a different opinion on the once-great American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck have given the public their beliefs on the modern Dream through the novels they have written, The Great Gatsby, and Of Mice and Men, respectively. One novel placed during the Great Depression and the other during the Roaring Twenties both illustrate how their author feels about the Dream itself through the use of many literary devices. While both novels have main characters with hopes for something better, all the characters seem to fall into the same plagued pit. Through depravity and decadence, the American Dream seems to have become exactly what its name implies: A dream, not a reality.
Dreams have long been the basis for extensive analysis, their meanings interpreted and reinterpreted. Some people believe that dreams reflect our repressed emotions, providing a necessary outlet for the negative aspects of our reality. Others find answers through dreams, believing that dreams provide simple solutions to seemingly complex issues in our lives. Louise Bogan, in her poem "The Dream," describes a dream that expresses both repression and solution. It is a poem about fear, and Bogan's message--the message of the dream, in fact--is that fear can be tamed through trust.
"Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had greatly lessened, when I began to distinguish my sensations from each other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink, and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and the boundaries of the radient roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant sounds of the birds, but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me back into silence."
Dreams play a major role in the story, and, throughout the history of literature, sleep has often been consid...
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares. In today’s society, the concept of dreaming and dreams, in general, has been featured in a variety of different mediums, such as literature, film and even music. While the mediums of film and music are both prime examples of this concept, the medium of literature, on the other hand, contains a much more diverse set of examples pertaining to dreams and dreaming. One key example is William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While the portrayal of dreams, in general, plays a prominent role in Shakespeare’s play, the exploration of many aspects of nature, allows readers to believe that dreams are merely connected to somewhat unconventional occurrences.
In the novel, Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee, the magistrate’s progressive, non-linear dreams are a parallel to his growing involvement with the barbarians and his growing distaste for the empire. The great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud said, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious.” In every dream there is a hidden meaning and when the reader starts analyzing the magistrate’s dreams he reveals that he is oddly attracted to the barbarians and knows he should not get involved and it will be a trial to get close to them.
The Psychodynamic view of dreaming suggests that the content in our dream is symbolic of something. Also, that the content in our dreams are based on unconscious desires as well as internal conflict.
Despite the large amount of time we spend asleep, surprisingly little is actually known about sleeping and dreaming. Much has been imagined, however. Over history, sleep has been conceived as the space of the soul, as a state of absence akin to death, as a virtual or alternate reality, and more recently, as a form of (sub)consciousness in which memories are built and erased. The significance attributed to dreams has varied widely as well. The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits.
“Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?” – this quote by author Alfred Lord Tennyson achieves to introduce an interrogation many have had over the years, and presumably ever since the notion of dream was invented. Indeed, the idea of dream argument questions whether it is possible for a human to be certain that he is awake or not. This quote illustrates the difficulty there is to decide was is true and what isn’t. It questions our perception, our judgment, and in a larger way the world we are surrounded by. I remember hearing my parents say “don’t worry, it was just a dream”. But isn’t it scary to imagine that the life I live presently is in fact one vast dream? And if it were the case, whose dream would it be? Do I have proofs that I am fully awake?
The author of The Pilgrim's Progress is well described by Coleridge's remark: "His piety was baffled by his genius; and Bunyan the dreamer overcame the Bunyan of the conventicle." This remark points out the difficulty that Bunyan faces when he attempts to write a religious piece of work in the style of allegory. The Pilgrim's Progress is "pious" because it is a piece written in dedication to God. It contains important religious teachings -- what a good Christian should do and what he should not do. What Coleridge means by Bunyan's "genius" is basically the story itself. The story is so well written that people become so interested in the story and forget the whole spiritual truth behind and this worry Bunyan. Coleridge also indicates in his remarks, the tension between "piety" and "dreaming". "Dreaming", as we know is unreal, and it can hardly be connected with "piety". But Bunyan, through his "genius", not only managed to bring these two things together, but in way that would be satisfiable to all.