. . . from the book your soul is writing about you." - Marsha Norman
Although this quote is a little dramatic and abstract, it fits with the theme surrounding the movie The Wizard of Oz. Dreams are something that cannot be seen, heard, or experienced by anyone other than the person dreaming; however, this doesn't make them any less real.
In The Wizard of Oz, the main character Dorothy experiences an extremely vivid dream. But, the twist is that the audience doesn't know this is a dream until the end when she wakes up. (I'm not even going to worry about spoilers because if you haven't seen this movie, shame on you.)
Anyway, Dorothy's dream is meant to be accepted by the viewers as entirely real. We root for her and her companions and shake our heads at the wicked witch and the cowardly wizard. Dorothy's entire journey is made because she wants to go home. Before ended up in Oz, she only wanted to get away from her tiny house in Kansas. Now that she's gone, she only wishes to go home. Dorothy's dream evidently is meant to teach her a lesson. She learns to not take for granted the people she loves and the home in which she lives.
Now, once it's revealed that she was dreaming, does this make her entire journey less real? Hardly. She wakes up and immediately reaches out to those she loves. While she may have only experienced the adventure within her head, the lesson is obviously still very vivid in her mind. Her experience is not invalid because she dreamed it but because she is a human who "doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels" (Descartes, Second Meditation).
Dorothy exhibits her humanity, as all of us might, when she accepts that her dream held some importance to her way of thinking. The entire journey she took was completely inside her head and yet it was life changing. This doesn't make her crazy. It just shows that our minds can think of ways to challenge us whether we want them to or not.
"Home is a place we all must find, child. It's not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing you mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we're always home, anywhere." - Glinda
Accepting a dream doesn't mean accepting it as true reality, but merely part of reality. That's the key part to everything for me in this post. I have to agree with you, mostly. She definitely does accept it, but also acknowledges that it is merely symbolism. Now, this might be going completely off topic, but I can't help but think of the reincarnation stories you hear around. For example, Jenny Cockell. She had multiple dreams of her own death, even had dreams of being someone else named Mary. Everyone, I mean, everyone, doubted her stories and played it off as merely her imagination. However, she soon was able to point out very minute details of her past life that couldn't be accounted for. Precious details, such as getting out a map of Ireland and automatically knowing where she came from, weren't things that she could have known. She even met her own son from her past life and he was convinced she was telling the truth! It started off as a dream, sure, but could that be here reality? Maybe it's a bit off the wall, or even in a different category, but I thought that it was certainly worth mentioning.
ReplyDeleteHere's her story, by the way: https://exemplore.com/paranormal/Jenny-CockellThe-True-story-of-a-Woman-Who-has-Lived-Before-Mother-of-yesterdays-Children
I think this post just goes to show how powerful the human mind and imagination is. How just changing the way we think affects our entire world and how we act. Dorothy changed her entire mannerisms just because of a dream. She did not actually go or do anything, but changing the way she thinks made her a better person.
ReplyDeleteI really like your quote from Glinda at the end of your post. As thinking beings we really must know ourselves before we can begin to understand anything else. Without the ability to think, what would we be? In a way, Dorothy's dream strengthens her own reality by strengthening her thoughts and knowledge of what her life means to her. Going to Oz in her dream helps her to understand and reason with her true reality. Assuming that is that Kansas is her true reality.
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