Secrecy Theme Analysis

Over the course of “Bad Dreams,” characters conceal truths from their loved ones in order to protect themselves. When the young girl, the story’s protagonist, wakes up from her nightmare, she considers telling her mother about it but decides not to. She’s afraid that her mother might laugh at her, or that speaking the details of the dream aloud would make them feel realer and more horrific. Either way, the girl is afraid that sharing her experience will hurt her in some way, so secrecy is safer: it allows her to protect her feelings and to conserve the imaginary world of her book that existed before her nightmare threatened to taint it. But that protection comes at a cost: it stops her from sharing a vulnerable moment with someone who could comfort her.

Similarly, when the girl’s mother discovers the chaos in the lounge and concludes that her husband (the girl’s father) is to blame, she subsequently decides that he is, as she’s long suspected, her enemy—someone working against her efforts to keep a tidy home. Instead of seeing this as a problem to solve, she resolves never to confront her husband about the incident, leaving it to him to breach the subject with her. This allows the woman to indulge in her secret feud with her husband without it affecting the practical nature of her relationship or her domestic life, though it also means she never discovers that her daughter, not her husband, is responsible for messing up the lounge. Through secrecy, the woman allows herself to live two lives, one in which she can fully feel and express her anger, and another in which her relationship continues in seeming harmony. “Bad Dreams” suggests that in a world of cruelty and judgment, people may use secrecy to maintain order and control. At the same time, though, keeping secrets can also be harmful, as it can create and sustain distance between people and prevent the truth from coming to light.