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63. Dream House as Pathetic Fallacy
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
Machado visits the woman from the Dream House in Bloomington to find out she’s invited a huge group of people over for Thanksgiving. The woman says she and Machado will cook for everyone. Machado ends up paying for a mountain of groceries, even though she told the woman that she’s broke. She prepares the food but realizes she doesn’t want to cut open the Cornish game hens, so the woman does it, and Machado feels like she’s standing too close to a lion. When the guests arrive, they eat off paper plates standing up and seem not to really acknowledge Machado.
The woman doesn’t respect Machado’s boundaries or needs, ignoring the fact that she doesn’t feel capable of paying for the groceries. Machado senses the violence and brutality of the woman and feels endangered just by being in her presence. Though Machado paid for and prepared the food, at the party she seems peripheral to the woman’s life, as shown by the way the woman’s friends apparently ignore her.
Themes
