Summary of the Recurring Dream | Magic of Word | Grade XI

January 3, 2020

Summary of the Recurring Dream

‘The Recurring Dream’ is a supernatural story about a mysterious dream which appears a mysterious dream which appears almost every night. A beautiful girl of 25, Kimberly Clark is the central figure of this story. She lives in London with her roommate Jannet Wilson. Kim loves to dance and has many friends. She has a good position in a large company. A mysterious recurring problem is a single problem in Kim’s life.

The strange dream always begins on a village road. Kim stands on a road and finds a lane with a white fence and hedge on each side. There is a small cottage at the end of the lane. There is a small cottage at the end of the lane. The house has a white color with a green shutter. In the dream, Kim walks up to the lane and enters the house.

She finds a man asleep in a bed. The man seems very cold with white hair and a white beard. Kim goes near to the bed and the man wakes up. When Kim opens her mouth to speak with him, she wakes up in her apartment in London.

This dream disturbs Kim very much. Following the suggestion of Janet, they go to the countryside to visit Janet’s parents next Saturday morning. Kim sits back on the seat and closes her eyes. A little later, as Janet turns the car into a country road, Kim wakes up. She requests to Janet to stop the car and comes out from the car. This place was similar to the place of her dream. Although Janet requests Kim not to go there Kim does everything whatever she used to do in her dream.

Finally, she reaches up to the house. Everything looks except a sign ‘FOR SALE’. When Kim knocks the door, an old man opens it and closes immediately. Then the man was also very similar to Kim’s dream. Kim finds herself in confusion. She requests the old man to open the door and also says that she wants to buy the house. The old man says that she cannot buy the house because a ghost hunts it every night. When Kim asks who the ghost is, the old man replies that it is Kim herself, and then he closes the door.

In this story, both Kim and the old man see each other in their dream. This recurring dream doesn’t disturb only Kim but also to the old man. This haunting dream might be the cause of selling a house. This story does not provide any background on why Kim has a recurring dream. Kim must have some terrible event of loss in her life. A routine and busy night of London might be the next cause of her dream. As Freud says that repressed desires appear in a dream is displacement form it might be Kim’s desire to have a boy partner.

Some Important questions of The Recurring Dream:

a) Write the story of ‘The Recurring Dream’ in brief.
Ans: Please refer to the summary before the last paragraph.

b) Why does Janet want to take Kim to her parents’ farm for a few days?
Ans: When Kim shares her problematic dream with her parents’ farmhouse in the countryside. Janet says so because the countryside is peaceful and naturally beautiful. She thinks Kim would forget about her fathers’ farm. Another reason can be that Kim has been living in the same place for a long time and the city is crowded. Janet thinks that if Kim changed the setting, her mind would be preoccupied with some other thing and forget the man and place of her dream. The old man with white hair and beard of her dream has troubled her a lot. Janet thinks that he would not reappear to her once she changes the setting. The third reason can be that Kim might have relief from her busy schedule. She will be in leisure and get freedom from her work. Since the dream is a mental related problem, Janet wants to treat her in those ways. This is all the treatment Janet has given to Kim. Simply looking at the solution thought and suggested by Janet is praiseworthy but fate took a different turn.

b) How does Janet help her friend Kim when she was troubled by the ghost in her dream?
Ans: Kimberly Clark is a beautiful girl of 25 living in an apartment in London. But the beautiful girl is troubled by the ghost in her dream. Being troubled by the recurring dream, she opts to share it with her own roommate Janet Wilson. Janet suggests that she should go to visit her parents’ farm in the countryside. There in the countryside, Kim sees the place of her dream and goes to visit it despite Janet’s suggestion of forgetting that all. When she sees the ghost of her dream, she gets confused and perhaps thinks about the reality of the man who opened and closed the door for her.

c) How did Janet Wilson help her friend Kim when she was troubled by the ghost?
Ans: Janet Wilson helped her friend Kim when she was troubled by the ghost by taking to the countryside. When Kim shares her problematic dream with her friend Janet Wilson, Janet suggests her to go outside is peaceful and naturally beautiful. She thinks kin will forget about her recurring dream by seeing the scenic beauty of her father’s farm. Kim has been living in the same place for a long time and the city is crowded. Janet thinks that is Kim changed the setting; her mind would be preoccupied with some other thing and forget the man and place of her dream. The old man with white hair and beard of her dream has troubled her a lot. Janet thinks that he would not reappear to her once she changes the settings.

d) What do you think is the reason some people have recurring dreams?
Ans: Since there is no rigid scientific reason behind why people see recurring dreams, every answer to these questions is merely a logical prediction and supposition. Psycho analysists, however, think that we see such a dream because of our desires. They are the product of our unfulfilled wishes. The wishes are unfulfilled get restored in our unconscious mind, but while at sleep they come into form and we see the dream. While talking about the recurring dream, we might also predict some other causes. We see such dreams simply because of stress, overwork, accident, and imagination. Many of the time the past life-memories come into existence which we have never thought of. Some other times we see the dream again and again when there is a deep impression of some person and event in our mind. In our dreams sometimes we see ghosts, wild animals, great buildings, juggles, dead people and friends, etc. In my opinion, we see these people, animals, things because of our unsatisfied desires or accident or terrible encounter with these things and objects. We have experienced that what we desire in a daytime, occurs in our dream at night. So the desire of getting something might be the cause of the recurring dreams. In the same way, sometimes we see the same dream day by day. We have experienced the fact that we fail in our exam in the dream if we are waiting for exam results. So fear might be the cause of a dream. Whatever the interpretation we pass they lack the scientific ground because they are mere assumptions.