In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz - Summary

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1
The narrator feels as though he is in the screening of a low quality old Biograph film. He imagines (or recalls from a story) his father walking in Brooklyn on a Sunday to meet his mother in 1909. He arrives at his mother's house while they are still eating. He is respected and liked. His mother comes downstairs. Something happens to the film and he is jarred out of the dream state and into his unhappiness but soon returns.

2
They leave the house arm in arm, his mother telling the plot of a novel she's reading and his father criticizing its characters. They take a street car to Coney Island. His father exaggerates the amount of money he makes. This is characteristic and the narrator begins to cry and is hushed by the lady sitting beside him.

3
The two are in Coney Island. They look at the beach from the boardwalk with its many bathers and at the boardwalk. They look at the waves breaking on the shore. The ocean and the sun burning overhead are intolerable and terrifying and the narrator leaves the theater for the men's room.

4
When he returns his parents are on the merry go round and seems like they will never get off but they do. They walk on the boardwalk and go to the best restaurant there and order with confidence. Father tells mother about the future and mother expresses great interest. He is swept away by the prospect of his own future. To the sound of a waltz he proposes and his mother sobbingly accepts. The narrator stands up and yells at the screen not to do it and he is admonished by the theater goers.

5
They go to get their picture taken on the boardwalk. The photographer keeps directing them but each pose is worse than the one before. His parents become agitated but the narrator understands the photographer. The final photo is not satisfactory.

6
His mother insists on going into a fortune teller's booth and his father goes very reluctantly and then leaves in anger and the fortune teller detains her. This is very distressing to the narrator who feels his very life's in danger. He again yells at the screen and this time the usher drags him out, admonishing him that he shouldn't be hysterical when he is so young and has his whole life before him. The usher tells him he will be sorry if "he doesn't do what he should do" and he wakes up on the morning of his 21st birthday.


Delmore Schwartz

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