August Strindberg and Dreams

Paper Summary:

The paper examines how August Strindberg makes use of the form of the dream in the plays "A Dream Play" and "The Ghost Sonata," with varied results. "A Dream Play" was written in 1901, and "The Ghost Sonata" in 1907. The paper shows how the structure of both plays is dreamlike and the characters experience the world as if in a dream. The subject matter of the plays, though, is life itself, with a strong religious and moral tone.

From the Paper:

"Much of the dialogue also makes the action of the play seem dreamlike, for though the dialogue could be taken as metaphorical, it has the tone of something surrealistic when the daughter says that the "castle keeps on growing up out of the earth" (Strindberg, "A Dream Play" 199). The action as well has a surrealistic quality, as when the daughter of Indra goes on her dream journey to the opera house, where a mystical door opens to show the four learned representatives of different faculties busily arguing over their disciplines and the great problems of human knowledge. This leads to the great fire that consumes the castle, followed by a wall of questioning human faces as the roof turns into a giant chrysanthemum. Such transformations are of the sort that occur in a dream, carrying symbolic meaning on a deep level."

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