Dreams vs. Reality Theme Analysis

In The Farming of Bones, Amabelle and her fellow Haitians work as manual laborers or domestic workers in the Dominican Republic, after leaving Haiti due to natural disasters. Due to their living conditions, many of the novel’s characters are dispirited, lonely, and homesick. As a result, they find solace and personal significance in their dreams, which feature their homeland or their family life. As these fantasies are often extremely tantalizing, they provide a means of escape; some characters within the story, therefore, begin to prioritize their dreams over reality. Danticat’s story thus illustrates the complicated nature of dreams. They provide happiness, which allows individuals to endure, but they can also seem better than reality, and so threaten one’s will to live. The story ultimately implies that getting lost in one’s dreams can be enticing, but real life is far more precious.

Danticat suggests that dreams are alluring because they offer alternatives to painful reality, or escape from unhappiness and grief. When Amabelle describes her mother, who drowned in a flood during her childhood, she emphasizes that her mother “didn’t show a lot of affection,” and “also didn’t smile often.” After her mother’s death, though, Amabelle’s dreams featured her mother “always smiling.” In this way, Amabelle’s dreams are more comforting than reality: they provide her with the motherly affection that she was deprived of in childhood.

Señora Valencia, Amabelle’s boss, is pregnant with twins and delivers them without a doctor’s assistance. In the midst of her delivery, she tells Amabelle that she has “been having more than [her] usual number of dreams,” and believes her mother was beside her during the birth. This exchange demonstrates how dreams substitute for reality in difficult times: dreams compensate for a missing parent’s love and comfort.

Additionally, Amabelle is plagued by nightmares about her parents’ deaths. When she describes this to Sebastien, he tells her to replace the nightmares with “a pleasant dream.” He tells her to dream that her parents “died natural deaths” and asks her to imagine that she left Haiti to “meet” him. By asking Amabelle to refashion her dreams in order to bring her peace, Sebastien illustrates an underlying implication about dreams: they are capable of providing alternate realities that overwrite tragedy.

As Danticat’s story continues, characters experience more frequent tragedies. As a result, dreams begin to offer more than a harmless, temporary escape: they offer an impossible fantasy of peace and happiness. When Amabelle returns to Haiti, she is unsure of Sebastien’s fate. She visits his mother, Man Denise, who informs her that he and his sister, Mimi, were killed. Man Denise then tells Amabelle to leave, as she wants to “dream up” her children. Amabelle later returns to see Man Denise’s house “bolted shut.” She is told that Man Denise likely “went someplace where only her children would find her if they come back.” Man Denise’s desire to dream about her children indicates that she is no longer willing to confront reality. Rather, she would prefer to get lost in her dreams and forgo the harsh truth of her children’s deaths, instead of experiencing life.

After Amabelle’s return, she creates a routine where each day is “exactly like the one before.” She adds that “new dreams seem [like] a waste.” Amabelle admits to being lost in a hollow, meaningless cycle; although she has survived, she repeats each day in a blur. This repetitive existence indicates that Amabelle has deprioritized her real life, and is content with her dreams. This eagerness to get lost in fantasies eventually begins to fade, however, and Amabelle begins to hope for self-growth. Through Amabelle’s gradual change of heart, Danticant complicates the idea of dreamsand how they entice people away from the difficulties of lifeby demonstrating their insufficiency.

After Amabelle settles into her friend’s house in Haiti, she allows herself to remember the other refugees who escaped. She thinks of them “going forward into their lives,” and wants to “ask” them how they could “walk into the future.” Amabelle’s wishes suggest that she is no longer content with the routine and comfort of her dreams. Instead, she wants to move forward, and learn how to embrace her future like her peers.

Amabelle’s interactions with Man Rapadou, the mother of a surviving refugee, further prompt Amabelle to reconsider a life of fantasies. Man Rapadou claims that her life, like Amabelle’s, has “always been rich with dreams,” but warns Amabelle that “old age is not meant to be survived alone.” She advises Amabelle to reprioritize, implying that the choice to remain lost in dreams can harm one’s life and happiness. After receiving this advice, and thinking of the other refugees’ futures, Amabelle re-evaluates. She claims that life can be “a strange gift,” and admits that she initially chose “a living death.” She even acknowledges that she “looked to [her] dreams […] for relief.” By the story’s end, she chooses instead to look “for the dawn.” Amabelle’s admissions reveal that she has begun to understand the inadequacy of dreams, and that she has discovered a newfound willingness to respect her life and look towards the future.

In Danticat’s story, dreams are omnipresent: many characters use them to dwell upon the past, or escape from their unhappy lives. These fantasies are often alluring, cheerful, and comforting; in fact, they provide so much relief that characters begin to lose sight of real life’s importance. This escapism illustrates how dreams are often enticing alternatives to reality; ultimately, however, dreams are an inadequate substitute for life. Life, although it is difficult, is more valuable and worthwhile.