Jane Alexander
Psychological Analysis
Mr. Sharkovitz
The Face of Jesus Can Be Seen in Every Child
In the short story “Dream Children,” by Gail Godwin, a young woman goes about her life in a dream-like state holding onto a secret that imprisons her every day. Throughout the story everything seems to be immersed in a hue of grey and in that haze there lays a story not fully told. The secret the woman possesses is one of tragedy. A year before moving to the “unspoiled village, nestled in the foothills of the mountains” the young woman and her husband went through something no parent wants to say they have gone through: losing a child. When at first losing the child at birth the woman was not initially informed. Later, after mistakenly receiving a child that was not her own it was instantly torn from her bosom and since then she has been left her with a torn heart and a feeling of rejection by her God. The young woman in this story shows signs of displacement as she repeatedly attempts to alleviate her feelings of abandonment by God by continuously envisioning her long lost child.
Displacement is a type of psychological defense mechanism in which people have some thought that has mentally stressed them so much that the first thing they do is, push that thought out of the consciousness. The second step to this mechanism is when the person then unconsciously moves that anxiety causing thought into another object. The young woman in this story displays both of these steps. In the young woman’s case she is displacing her saddening thoughts of losing a child and feelings of being deserted by her God into subconsciously creating a ghostly, Jesus-like figure of her child in order to pacify her depression. An example of when she shows the first step of displacement is when the young woman along with her husband and another couple all come to the house for dinner. The two women begin to talk and eventually conversation is brought up regarding a mother losing her child. The main character’s husband over hears the conversation taking place and immediately breaks it up by asking his wife to take the dog out and proposing to her to join him in the kitchen. He meets her there pleading: “Are you okay? That stupid yammering bitch.” But the young woman nonchalantly responds to her husband saying: “I’m fine. Please go back. I’ll take the dog out and come back. Please…” Here the husband sympathizes for his wife but she rejects the sympathy instantly claiming she is “fine.” “Fine” is certainly not a word most would pick to describe their state in a situation like this but by saying it the woman is trying to forget, and distract herself away from her past even more. She does this in an attempt to furthermore try to repress the incident of losing her child deeper into her subconscious by immediately responding to her husband and requesting him to resume his activities with their company, hoping to have him not carryon with the subject any longer.
An example of the second step to the mechanism occurs when the woman begins to think she is seeing her child when in fact, all that she is seeing is the creation of her own subconscious thoughts. These subconscious thoughts are ones of feeling neglected and abandoned by her God. The woman, subconsciously, strives to reestablish her connection/relationship with God and attempts to do this by displacing her feelings into creating an imaginary figure of her child. It all begins late at night when the young woman is alone in the house and begins to hear a repeating rattling sound that she believes to be coming from a neighboring room in the house. She enters the dark room with the yellow floor (which symbolizes her trodden happiness) only to find her child crouched down in the corner of the room: “wearing pajamas a little too big for him, obviously hand-me-downs, and he was exactly two years older than the only time she had ever held him in her arms.” The text continues by saying how: “The two of them knelt in the corner of the room, taking each other in. His large eyes were the same as before: dark and unblinking.” The mother then approaches her son: “She knelt, the tears streaming down her cheeks.” Their visits are also described as having: “no touching, of course no touching or speaking.” A lot like God cannot be touched by His believer the woman is left unable to grasp the figure of her child. Here is an example of how the woman has subconsciously created this fantasy figure of her child using her imagination to lessen her depressing thoughts of desertion by God. Also the imagery used by saying how the young boy’s eyes were unblinking brings to mind the thought of Jesus. In many historical movies that try to portray Jesus as a younger man on his journey of life he is often seen as having something all the others did not. There was something about him that drew your eye and made him more brilliant than the others. This characteristic, although maybe undetected, is most often because the editors have made the movie so that Jesus’ character remains unblinking.
This scene in the book is also an exact imitation of the walk Jesus took to the site where he was to be crucified. History books state that on the way to his crucifixion Jesus stumbled while carrying his cross. Upon his stumble his mother, Mary, approached him with tears in her eyes. A lot in the same manner these events took place, the imagery in the scene in “Dream Children” unfolds the same way. The young mother sees her son crouched down (symbolizing his stumble) wearing: “pajamas a little too big for him.” These pajamas represent the over-sized cloak Jesus was wearing upon his walk. Also, the way the young woman approached her son, kneeling in front of him with “tears streaming down her cheeks” resembles the way Mary approached Jesus upon his fall. All of the imagery, in this scene, works together to apply the rhetoric of Jesus to the imaginary figure of the child the young woman creates in an attempt to rekindle her connections with God.
Light and darkness are also mentioned in this scene. Upon initially entering the room the young woman was being “drowned by darkness” but once discovering her son in the corner the “hall light came on silently.” This transition from darkness to light symbolizes the moment when the young woman steps out of her dismal life and into a new life of clarity and happiness. In the entire beginning of the story the world surrounding the woman is always described in having some sort of grayness/darkness about it. This grayness is what symbolizes the woman’s incompleteness without her son. Yet once she discovers her son, the woman’s life enters a new realm of clarity and happiness as presented through the presence of light now being introduced into the story.
Along with the representation of the defense mechanism, displacement, in the story, the woman also displays a waiting period in which she anxiously awaits the arrival of the image of her son. These periods of waiting that she demonstrates are symbolized by her fast rides on her horse. The riding occurs in the story at two intervals. She rides in the beginning of the story before she discovers her son and then again after discovering him. In the beginning of the story her rides are described as having speeds that only one possessed with insanity would commit. Her horse is also described as having “murderous red eyes.” This period symbolizes the woman’s unhappiness without her child and the long she has to see him again. Yet the second interval of her riding is described as having a speed that reverberates with grace. It is in this interval that her horse is also mentioned as moving swiftly, seeming to carry the woman above him as though she were weightless. This type of ride is described after the woman encounters her son. The reading states: “She rode her horse through the fields of the waning season, letting him have his head; she rode like the wind, a happy, happy woman. She rode faster than fear because she was a woman in a dream, a woman anxiously awaiting her child’s sleep.” Here the mother rides without any fury or fear; she rides with only pure joy and grace. A grace that has now come over her as a result of her finally reconnecting her once diminished relationship with God after displacing her feelings of abandonment by him in creating an imaginary Jesus-like figure of her long lost son.