Dream Psychology
Understanding this example of minimalist fiction will be facilitated by a familiarity with dream psychology. The ultimate meaning of the story lies less than in what is explicitly conveyed than in the gaps between what happens. That the story is intended to be helped along by an awareness is instituted by it’s very title. Since the story itself is not really about dreams, but rather the connection between a character’s dream and reality, it only makes sense to analyze what few concrete details are provided. Two very important things to get one started. Perhaps ironically, yellow is traditionally associated in dream symbolism not with the dreamers of the world, but the more practical personalities that seek information and understanding. Secondly, wheelchairs are a very common sign indicating a subconscious anxiety over feelings of helplessness and dependency on others.
Repression
The story begins with a woman having a dream about past lovers joyously swinging back and forth in wheelchairs suspended from above. Her husband declares it boring and they go back to sleep. We later learn she’s quit her job—which she studied for in college—and engages in fantasies straight out of 1950’s TV shows about being a married homebody who sews and cooks. And yet also is prone to almost fetishistic thoughts about the mens’ legs that is connected on a barely conscious level with imagery of “primitive hunters quietly and swiftly” stalking prey. While writing thank-you notes (and lying about how much she loves the Blue Mountain pottery she and her husband agree belongs to the no-thank-you pile) she is temporarily overcome by what is almost a panic attack over the fear of a future that is nothing but monotony and repetition. She breaks free from this panic by going back to the repetition of writing the notes. It is a classic study of subconscious repressed sexuality helped along by a little bit of conscious suppression.
Minimalism and Dream Interpretation
Not much happens in the story, action wise. If one were taking notes while listening to it being read, the result might look something like this: she gets sexually excited by the muscular sight of men’s legs..agreeing about gifts…favorite color is yellow…1950’s married life fantasies…John’s a lawyer while she gives up journalism…he asks “why wheelchairs. The details come fast, but without much depth to most of it; the backstory appears as quick flashes of imagery. The real focus of the story—and even we’re talking just a short paragraph in each case—is when the narrator temporarily enters the bride’s mind to reveal her fetish for male legs, her Eisenhower-era fantasies of a perfect marriage, and her panic attack.
Despite the attention given these insight into her thoughts, however, they do not explain anything. Minimalist writing is built on a foundation of providing only as much information explicitly as needed, handing off the rest of the job of interpreting meaning to the reader. This turns out to be a very appropriate mode of composition for this particular story as it mimics the job of dream psychoanalysis in which only the highlights of most dreams are remembered and meaning must be constructed from filling in the gaps.
