Poe's 'A Dream Within a Dream'

In Poe's critical essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," he explains the thought process behind his writing of "The Raven." In showing his method of composition, he also reveals his philosophy about what makes poetry succeed and what separates it from prose. He says that in keeping a subject poetic, it must retain both complexity and suggestiveness, or "some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning." A poem fails if the writer brings out too much of this under-current of theme, which has the effect of turning poetry into prose "of the very flattest kind."

Thus, Poe tries to create a mood in his reader that is a product of both the surface subject and the more indefinite, complex, and lingering subtext. In "A Dream Within a Dream," he creates complexity by contrasting the hopeful mood in the first stanza with the desperate mood in the second stanza. The same idea that at first gives hope to the speaker also causes his despair.

The speaker in this first-person narrative starts out addressing someone else, some "you," from whom he is now parting and has given a good-bye kiss upon the brow. The placement of this kiss suggests intimacy, but perhaps not that of lovers. The second address to a "you" comes in line 4, but this does not necessarily seem to be the same "you," and it could in fact be a more general second-person address to all such people who deem that days are a dream, with whom the speaker agrees. After these two references to other people, the speaker's thoughts turn inward for the rest of the poem as he ponders the ramifications of his thoughts on the status of truth and reality.

The speaker states that "my days have been a dream" (5). If this is so, he says, then that is a comforting thing in the face of some hardship, because "if hope has flown away," that does not necessarily mean it is really gone (6). One's perspective may have changed, and things may now seem hopeless, but that does not mean they really are because "All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream" (10-11). He states these closing lines of the first stanza as fact, without any sort of question attached to them. The thought that reality is a dream is comforting because that means that bad feelings, or dark times, or trials, are also dreams. In parting with someone, this thought can be a hopeful thought because the ensuing feelings of loneliness, now that "hope has flown away," are not real or lasting (6). A dream never lasts; it is fleeting and hard to hold onto, and once lost can never be recaptured as it originally was. Also, "a dream within a dream" suggests an additional layer of uncertainty upon the initial uncertainty of a dream. A dreamlike state whose reality is another dreamlike state compounds the distance between the ways things seem at the present and any concrete reality.

But as the speaker continues to contemplate the dreamlike status of his existence, his thoughts become less hopeful. The second stanza begins with a concrete scene of the speaker on a beach trying to hold onto grains of sand. Poe's diction here, calling the beach a "surf-tormented shore" (13) lends an ominous feel to the setting, especially as the speaker is "amid the roar" (12), invoking the idea that he is standing against some sort of torment. Although Poe uses nothing to transition between the stanzas and signal a change in thought, the immediate shift in mood is obvious.

The speaker holds the grains, but they slip between his fingers "to the deep" (17). Again, his word choice in calling the water "the deep" (17), and saying that the sand "creeps" (16), is quite ominous. At the realization that he cannot hold onto the sand and cannot "save /

One from the pitiless wave," he weeps (21-22). It is not the physical act of not holding onto a grain of sand that he weeps at but the idea that he can hold onto nothing if everything is a dream. He repeats the closing lines of the first stanza again, but the mood has shifted dramatically and he almost cries them out in desperate anguish, this time as a question that he does not answer, perhaps because he fears that he already knows what the answer is: "Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?" (23-24). The fleeting nature of a dreamlike existence is now a cause of despair, because nothing is constant. In putting force on the word "all," the speaker wonders if there is anything anywhere that he can hold onto. Even the physical world, in the sand, is changing and fleeting. Nothing is lasting, within himself or outside himself, and with this realization his hope becomes futility. The speaker cries out to God in lines 19 and 21, and this enhances his sudden helplessness because now he can no longer find any comfort by his own understanding or perception, and he seems to be flailing about for something more concrete, perhaps even the idea of God. But that cry is not to some personal God he knows, but a desperate plea for anything to save him.

Each line has either seven or six syllables except for line 11, which has eight. Lines 18-22 all have six syllables, which is the longest stretch of these shorter lines, and the change in rhythm accompanies a shift in thought. The speaker is weeping and he questions himself now, his words more direct and forceful. The last six lines, in fact, are three rhetorical questions, each more somber, each building on the one before, until the final question, which is heightened by the repetition of the word "dream" and the long vowel sounds that draw out the line and resonate. Poe also uses repetition when the speaker weeps, on line 18, again heightened by the repeated long vowel sounds joined with the rhyme from line 17. The change in rhythm and sound give more force to these closing lines and in this finale Poe creates an intense emotional effect.

Poe heightens the despair at the poem's conclusion by creating at first a feeling of hope, which he then shatters. Also, by letting the same thought be both comforting and despairing, and asking a series of questions at the end that he does not answer, Poe sets forth an idea that is not neatly packaged, nor even able to be completely captured by words; he hints at the inner turmoil that any contemplative person feels in trying to make sense of his world and determine the nature of reality, a question still very much alive today.