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116. Dream House as Apartment in Chicago
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
In the present, Machado compares herself to Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom and turning into a pillar of salt. Unlike Lot’s wife, God gives Machado’s past self several more chances to walk away without looking back, and she looks like a cartoon as she switches over and over from human to salt, then back again.
Machado seems to find her past self ridiculous for the number of times she turned to look back on—or even return to—her relationship with the woman from the Dream House. However, the involvement of a divine being, at least in her imaginary narrative, suggests that looking back was inevitable.
Themes
