Rhoda attempts to copy her friends in a way that suggests she finds normal behavior baffling and unintuitive. While she finds comfort and respite in the sensation of dissolving and floating as she falls asleep, her act of touching her feet to the bottom of the bedframe to stay grounded insinuates that there’s danger in drifting
too far apart from the currents of normal human experience. The chapter’s final lines position life itself as a dream from which she wants to wake—but can’t.