ESSAY CEMETERY

Delmore Schwartz In Dreams Begin Responsibilities Themes Movies as drug of escapism Daydreaming is hereditary in this family Struggling to piece together the movie Nature reflects emotions ·        Preoccupation with preservation of the moment, with immortalization of the moment rather than the experience; the grand scheme of things more important than the moment; a sense of doom and appreciation of the attempt to fix the sense, to fix the past ·        Anxiety of conformity which is illustrated by the structure of the dream – like a movie – feels he is watched and doesn't do things right ·        Is he anxious about not being born? Is he desperate for his parents' relationship to have worked? He sees his parents' mistakes clearly and is desperate not to repeat them, to do what's right, a "right" that is dictated by society. Style and devices First per...

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 t...