Dreams, or Lack Thereof

In the Farming of Bones, Amabelle experiences several sets of dreams, including a vivid recollection of her parents’ death by drowning, a somewhat sexual dream of her fiancé Sebastien, and later in the novel, a dream of crossing the border to give her testimonial of the Haitian massacre. The dreams that haunt Amabelle occur during rather uneasy periods in her life, and seem to signify her approach towards personal ‘crossroads.’ For example, it is after Amabelle learns the identity of the murdered cane-farmer that she dreams of her childhood, and it is after the death of Senora Valencia’s son that she dreams of Sebastien. Amabelle’s dreams, which document memories of both her recent and her distant past, emerge when she is uncertain about how to deal with the crises which transpire around her.

In my own life, I find that my most vivid dreams occur when I am undergoing a significant amount of stress. For example, prior to my flight to England last fall (and I only recall this because it was written in a journal which I was perusing through last weekend) I dreamt that en route to the airport I somehow let my passport fly out of the car window, and the remainder of the reverie entailed my dream-like self dodging Saturday morning Mass Pike traffic as I attempted to recover the one item that I truly needed to leave the country. Or often I will have vivid dreams that seem to fuse different facets of my life: friends from Cape Cod with friends from Stonehill, or people from high school with people from college.

Dreams are definitely a way that my body deals with stress. During the summer or during any very relaxing time, I rarely recall the contents of a dream. Similarly, I think that Amabelle’s dreams are a projection of her fears and concerns as well as a subconscious method of releasing her internalized stress. However, unlike my dreams, which cease when life is stress-free, Amabelle’s dreams stop when life is most traumatic. As she and Yves escape the Dominican Republic, each moment seems to be driven by a rush of adrenaline, and her actions and reactions lack volition or thought. It is perhaps this lack of agency and control which causes the lapse in her dream sequences. As soon as the pair reaches Haiti, the dreams resume. That her dreams continue in Haiti is presumably because Amabelle is again unsure of how to cope with the tragedies that have befallen her, and also because of her uneasiness with recommencing her life without the town of Alegria, Sebastien, and Senora Valencia.