The Society of Reluctant Dreamers was a unique read – but not for the reason that I expected. What fascinated me about this book is the setting, the Portuguese-speaking regions of Africa. This is an area that I am not very familiar with, so I do admit that it was difficult for me to follow the plot in certain parts.
Another aspect of the book that stood out to me was how modern it was compared to the other texts that we have read this semester. The period that the book was set in is fairly recent, with the epilogue taking place in 2017. Daniel’s character was interesting, especially because of his dreams and how they were influenced by his reality. It made me ponder how our subconscious thoughts are often influenced by our life and the people in them. This is similar to the associations made in the lecture to Freud and his beliefs of dreams being a manifestation of one’s unconscious thoughts.
Furthermore, I found it fascinating that the author decided to combine the political storyline of the book with magical realism. Politics are notoriously controversial and rooted in the ‘harsh reality of life’ – so it’s quite interesting to see how the narrator’s thoughts are largely communicated through his dreams. I found the politics a little hard to keep track of throughout the book, especially because I was completely unaware of the entire situation.
Also, I found the initial dialogue between Daniel and the hotel owner to be kind of odd, especially when they discussed Hitler’s kindness to animals. I suppose it did achieve the purpose that the author intended, which was to make us uncomfortable at the idea of a truly terrible person having any goodness in him.
Overall, I found Agualusa’s The Society of Dreamers to be a unique concept with an intriguing execution. By combining dreams with politics, Agualusa pushes readers to mull over how our reality can merge with something as stressful as politics. My question to the class would be: what do you think of the act of dreaming and what does it say about our subconscious?
I can’t believe I am writing my concluding blog post, this term really flew by! At the beginning of the course I was concerned about having to read a book a week, I did not have much faith in myself to actually do it, but I did it and I feel accomplished in having read […]
First I would like to say thank you for such a wonderful semester. This course has allowed me to gain a new understanding of literature as a whole. I do not think I would have found any of these books on my own – so I am really glad I took this course (even though […]
At first glance, the title of this novel caught my attention. I really wanted to leave off this semester on a more positive note – and thought that any novel to do with dreams must do so! This was actually one of my favorite books we have read this semester. I enjoyed every single page […]
Amulet written by the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño is a great book! I liked reading it from start and never found myself counting how many pages they were left until I got to the end. Similar to many of the books we have read I noticed the theme of ‘memory’ coming up again. From the […]
I liked this book, the intertwining storylines of politics, romance, and dreams made it an interesting read. While the dreaming and romantic narratives provided interesting psychological thought and emotional elements, the commentary on the political tension was my favorite element of this book. I enjoyed that the dream narrative was not imposed upon by Freud’s […]
Cercas’ “Soldier of Salamis has a bewildering jigsaw puzzle- like structure and form, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It invited the reader to accompany the narrator on his quest to piece together fragmented information from the past, through archives, oral history … Continue reading
This week we were tasked with reading the Soldier of Salamis; I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just did not enjoy this book. It is a book that disinterested me, was too long, and was kind of confusing at times. I hate to be like this, and will try my best to write […]
It feels nice to be somewhat stationary in our reading journey as it’s been a while since we’ve last read…
I see a steady decline in my enjoyment of these readings but it is much more blamed on final burnout rather than the quality of the books. I hope my blog posts continue to attempt to give them justice as we have discussed; the authors might not be bigger than us but their books are. […]
