Philosophy and Point of View in 'Inception': How Do We Distinguish Dreams from Waking Life? Leah Sallis 12th Grade

The plot of the 2010 film Inception relates to entering dreams, intercepting dreams, and implanting ideas in dreams. Dreams are a window into the subconscious, both in the film and reality, a place where thoughts we didn’t even know we’re having occur. The reason for dreams in reality is that our brains get bored at night and project a movie, essentially to create stimulating scenarios to substitute for the arousal felt in waking life. If one were able to invade someone’s subconscious thoughts, the most private of places would be violated. For all of history, dreams have been inspiration for numerous expressions of art such as paintings, songs, films, books etcetera. The Salvador Dali painting named “Dream Caused by The Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” depicts Dali’s wife in a dream. Dali states that the painting was intended “to express for the first time in images Freud’s discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative”. The Freudian idea was practically described as an unintentional expression of the subconscious mind in the frame of the dreamer. “A transformative articulation of prior unconscious dream thoughts” (Freud, 1953)

There are many theories to the importance of dreams in...