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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
Years after the events in the Dream House, Machado writes part of this book in an island cottage near Washington State. Her experience there is full of natural encounters. One day, she picks up a snail and drops it by accident. She feels terrible guilt at having harmed another creature, especially because her book is about suffering.
Machado treats the natural world with reverence and is hyper-aware of her effect on it. Her remorse at having hurt the snail suggests that the cycle of abuse and harm‚ which she witnessed in her aunt who bullied her, isn’t inevitable: Machado, having been abused, still has no intent to abuse the beings around her.
Themes
One day on the island, Machado and a fellow writer hear a terrified scream from the forest. They search for the person in danger, but when they can’t find them, Machado suggests it was an animal. The writers hear the same scream again near the end of their time on the island. Again, they agree it must have been an animal, but the sound of intense fear haunts Machado.
The ominous scream, and the fact that nobody really works out from where it came, casts a vague feeling of dread over Machado’s time on the island. It seems that no matter how far she gets from the Dream House, fear and danger will always follow her.
Themes
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