Previous
The Mother
The father lives in the basement apartment with his wife (the mother) and their two children (the girl and her brother). He works during the day, then studies toward his degree at night. The father’s trumpet and his writing left out in the lounge contrasts with the mother’s neatly put-away sewing machine, demonstrating the father’s relative freedom to pursue his creative and academic interests while his wife appears to prioritize keeping an orderly home. He seems unaware that his wife resentments him, given his physical affection toward her despite her privately held conclusion that he wants to undermine her domestic efforts.
The Father Quotes in Bad Dreams
The Bad Dreams quotes below are all either spoken by The Father or refer to The Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Bad Dreams
Quotes
[…] sometimes she felt a pang of fear for her father, as if he were exposed and vulnerable […]. She never feared in the same way for her mother: her mother was capable; she was the whole world.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Perhaps he’d like bacon for his breakfast—she had saved up her housekeeping to buy him some. His mother had cooked bacon for him every morning.
This time, for once, she was clearly in the right, wasn’t she? He had been childish, giving way to his frustration—as if she didn’t feel fed up sometimes. And he criticised her for her bad temper!
[…] she seemed to see the future with great clarity, looking forward through a long tunnel of antagonism, in which her husband was her enemy. This awful truth appeared to be something she had always known, though in the past it had been clouded in uncertainty and now she saw it starkly.
But he came at some point to stand behind his wife at the stove and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck, kissing her behind her ear, and she leaned back into his kiss, as she always did, tilting her head to give herself to him.
Get the entire Bad Dreams LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Father Quotes in Bad Dreams
The Bad Dreams quotes below are all either spoken by The Father or refer to The Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Bad Dreams
Quotes
[…] sometimes she felt a pang of fear for her father, as if he were exposed and vulnerable […]. She never feared in the same way for her mother: her mother was capable; she was the whole world.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Perhaps he’d like bacon for his breakfast—she had saved up her housekeeping to buy him some. His mother had cooked bacon for him every morning.
This time, for once, she was clearly in the right, wasn’t she? He had been childish, giving way to his frustration—as if she didn’t feel fed up sometimes. And he criticised her for her bad temper!
[…] she seemed to see the future with great clarity, looking forward through a long tunnel of antagonism, in which her husband was her enemy. This awful truth appeared to be something she had always known, though in the past it had been clouded in uncertainty and now she saw it starkly.
But he came at some point to stand behind his wife at the stove and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck, kissing her behind her ear, and she leaned back into his kiss, as she always did, tilting her head to give herself to him.
