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49. Dream House as Idiom
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
A few months before the woman from the Dream House moves into the Dream House, a young woman goes missing in Bloomington. During the first few months of the woman living there, she and Machado are acutely aware of the girl’s disappearance. Machado wonders where the girl had been going when she was last seen walking down the street with no shoes on.
Machado is tuned into stories of danger and strangers’ trauma, a sign that she’s hyperaware of the danger that’s lurking in her own life. The woman’s disappearance seems to take away the idea Machado first had of Bloomington as a gentle, blooming place.
Themes
