Imagination Theme Analysis

In “Bad Dreams,” imagination has the potential to bring people both horror and freedom. For the young female protagonist of the story, the book Swallows and Amazons provides refuge and joy, allowing her to relate to her classmates by sharing in the imagined world of the novel. The girl sleeps with the novel next to her and rereads it several times, treasuring it as a failsafe way to access a world beyond her own. But as this story begins, she wakes up from a nightmare in which she discovered a secret epilogue to her beloved novel. The girl finds the imaginary epilogue horrific: it details the mundane lives and deaths that the novel’s vibrant, youthful characters go on to live after the novel ends. Just as the girl’s imagination allows her to indulge in a fictional world, it also opens that world up to the creeping dread of reality. 

Meanwhile, the girl’s mother demonstrates that imagination can have a profound effect on one’s experience of reality. When she discovers that someone has caused chaos in the lounge, tipping over all the furniture and leaving the room in a state of disarray, her imagination first leads her to assume that someone has invaded the house. Ultimately, she concludes that her husband (the girl’s father) must have thrown a fit of rage—or, perhaps, played a cruel joke on her to show her how little he regards her efforts to keep the house in good shape. The woman’s subsequent train of thought leads her to decide that her husband—who, in fact, had nothing to do with the mess in the living room—is her enemy. This conclusion doesn’t really upset the mother, however. Instead, it seems to provide clarity that allows her to cope with her life, in which she’s frustrated by the limits of being a housewife and mother. In this way, “Bad Dreams” highlights the power of imagination to delight us, enrage us, or betray us. In any case, the characters’ inner conflicts portray imagination as a potent force that can illuminate one’s experience of reality as much as it can warp it.