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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In the Dream House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Queer Visibility
Christianity and Shame
Abuse, Trauma, and Healing
Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom
Summary
Analysis
This chapter takes the form of a “choose your own adventure” novel. At the end of each page, the reader makes a choice that takes them to a different page. The story begins on a beautiful morning in the Dream House, but Machado’s contentment turns to fear when she rolls over to see the woman from the Dream House, who tells her that she kept her awake from moving all night. The options at the end of this page are apologizing, providing a solution, or telling the woman to calm down.
The structure of this chapter references a playful genre of fiction, typically for young readers. But its content, involving the woman verbally abusing Machado, turns that playful genre on its head, suggesting that there’s no room for joyful, free expression in Machado’s relationship with the woman from the Dream House.
Themes
If Machado apologizes, the woman from the Dream House tells her that if she’s really sorry, she should stop moving in her sleep. If Machado suggests the woman wake her up next time it happens, the woman calls her a “cunt.” After both these options play out, Machado follows the woman into the kitchen. If the reader chooses to tell the woman to calm down, they reach a page that says, “Are you kidding? You’d never do this.”
The woman’s suggestion is to do the impossible—to control how Machado behaves while asleep. No matter which option Machado chooses, she still faces verbal abuse. It demonstrates, to the reader—if not to Machado herself—that the woman’s behavior has very little to do with her actions, and that she isn’t to blame for the abuse she experiences.
Themes
In the kitchen, Machado makes breakfast. The woman from the Dream House eats, then tells Machado to clean up after her. There are two options for the reader. If she does what she’s told, she washes the dishes, brainstorming how to solve the issue of moving in her sleep. If she tells her to do it herself, the reader flips to the same page as before which says, “You’d never do this.”
Though this chapter is structured under the pretense of allowing the reader to choose their own journey, the reality is that there’s very little choice available. Looking back, Machado tries to give herself the option to stand up against the woman, but in reality, that wasn’t an option for her.
Themes
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That night, the woman from the Dream House has sex with Machado who lies there silently and then pretends to climax. The options here are to sleep or to dream about the past, present, or future. The dream of the past involves the woman telling Machado she’s not responsible for anything she does in the first 10 minutes of a day. The dream of the present involves Machado from the future telling her past self that she’s safe in the dream, and that there’s a way out—but she’s interrupted.
Machado seems to gain little, if any, pleasure from her relationship by this point. She doesn’t enjoy or actively participate in sex, only pretending to orgasm to satisfy the woman, or at least to reduce the chances of her getting angry. Her dreams either involve her current situation or her escape from it—she can’t even find joy in her unconscious imagination.
Themes
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Whatever Machado dreams of, she wakes up the same way she did the previous day, with the woman from the Dream House berating her. Once again, she can choose to apologize or offer the woman a solution. The third option this time is to “tear through the house like it’s Pamplona” and drive away theatrically. In that case, future Machado tells her past self that she’ll allow her to imagine it that way, even though that’s not how it happened. Peppered through the “choose your own adventure” are rogue pages that reprimand the reader for choosing them as an easy way out.
The cyclical nature of this chapter, along with all the futile dead ends, emphasize how difficult Machado finds it to see a way out of her relationship. As she writes her story in the future, she tries to provide her past self some respite through the power of narrative—but really, the only power she has as an author is to tell the truth.
Themes
