Ramsay's Aunt Jen- The Significance of Sunshine's dreams
Sigmund Freud is considered to be one of the greatest minds of his time and has fathered many cornerstone principles which have shaped and given form to modern psychology and psychoanalysis. His writings are diverse and tackle a range of aspects concerning the human mind, human behavior and even human development. In 1900, Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was published. In this text, the renowned psychologist put forward his views and theories on dreams and how they came about. More importantly, Freud delineated how dreams can be interpreted within psychoanalysis in order to help patients to better unearth their deep seated psychological issues which plagued them since he posited that dreams came from the subconscious.
Now this brings me back to Paulette's Ramsay's Aunt Jen. Every novel has an exposition. The crafting of the exposition is critical since it hooks readers or sinks them. Additionally, a good exposition must pose some kind of mystery to readers or suspense so that they will want to continue on the journey into this literary world depicted to them. Ramsay opens her text with dreams and it is important for teachers and students both to unpack these dreams to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of what the text strives to achieve.
Freud's postulation on dreams is simple. Essentially, every object and person in a dream is often times a symbol or metaphor for the underlying emotions or desires which are being suppressed by the id or unconscious. Like in literature, one must pay attention to how the object or person is present to decipher its hidden meaning. Sunshine's dreams are important for just that reason- they are filled with symbols. It is also important to keep in mind that symbols often double as examples of foreshadowing especially when they are presented in the exposition.
The first dream we are told about is Sunshine's mother trying to grab her as she sinking in the water but her mother suddenly turns into a "River Mumma" (1) and swims away leaving Sunshine alone. Readers are then informed that a River Mumma is bad luck. This situation is also highly symbolic since in mirrors the actual situation that Aunt Jen is enduring. She wants to hold om to her daughter but eventually chooses to give up on her relationship with her daughter without realizing it. It is also foreshadowing since the relationship is not broken indefinitely until later in the text.
Additionally, we can also speculate that it is Aunt Jen's migration that causes the complete break down of the relationship she has with her daughter, Sunshine. This is evident when Sunshine relates that, "She asked me to describe the ship and when I did, she said that it looked just like the one you went to England on" (1).
The other two dreams presented in the first letter both have similar latent meanings. These dreams must be analyzed and their literary values as structural and literary devices must be established in order to create a panoramic view of the narrative structure of the text while optimizing on the Caribbean superstition that dreams can predict the future.
Now this brings me back to Paulette's Ramsay's Aunt Jen. Every novel has an exposition. The crafting of the exposition is critical since it hooks readers or sinks them. Additionally, a good exposition must pose some kind of mystery to readers or suspense so that they will want to continue on the journey into this literary world depicted to them. Ramsay opens her text with dreams and it is important for teachers and students both to unpack these dreams to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of what the text strives to achieve.
Freud's postulation on dreams is simple. Essentially, every object and person in a dream is often times a symbol or metaphor for the underlying emotions or desires which are being suppressed by the id or unconscious. Like in literature, one must pay attention to how the object or person is present to decipher its hidden meaning. Sunshine's dreams are important for just that reason- they are filled with symbols. It is also important to keep in mind that symbols often double as examples of foreshadowing especially when they are presented in the exposition.
The first dream we are told about is Sunshine's mother trying to grab her as she sinking in the water but her mother suddenly turns into a "River Mumma" (1) and swims away leaving Sunshine alone. Readers are then informed that a River Mumma is bad luck. This situation is also highly symbolic since in mirrors the actual situation that Aunt Jen is enduring. She wants to hold om to her daughter but eventually chooses to give up on her relationship with her daughter without realizing it. It is also foreshadowing since the relationship is not broken indefinitely until later in the text.
Additionally, we can also speculate that it is Aunt Jen's migration that causes the complete break down of the relationship she has with her daughter, Sunshine. This is evident when Sunshine relates that, "She asked me to describe the ship and when I did, she said that it looked just like the one you went to England on" (1).
The other two dreams presented in the first letter both have similar latent meanings. These dreams must be analyzed and their literary values as structural and literary devices must be established in order to create a panoramic view of the narrative structure of the text while optimizing on the Caribbean superstition that dreams can predict the future.
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