In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" is a short story by Delmore Schwartz. It was first published in 1937 in the Partisan Review; it appears in Schwartz's short story collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories.

[edit] Plot summary

The story tells of an unnamed young man who has a dream that he is in an old-fashioned movie theater in 1909. As he sits down to watch the film, he starts to realize that it is a motion picture adaptation of his parents' courtship. The black-and-white film is of very poor quality, and the camera is shaky, but nonetheless he is engrossed. Soon the young man starts to get upset. He yells things at the screen, trying to influence the outcome of his parents' courtship and the other people in the audience begin to think he is crazy. Several times the character breaks down. In the end he shouts at his parents when it appears they are going to break up, and he is dragged out of the theater by an usher who reprimands him.

The animadversion is important to the story, as it reveals a bit of the character's insecurity. In the end, the character wakes up from his dream and notes that it is the snowy morning of his twenty-first birthday.