How The Dead Dream is a satirical examination of values in the modern world and the selfishness of human beings. While T. is the embodiment of those characteristics, and on occasion borders on caricature, Millet always brings him back from the edge just enough for him to be believable. She has divided his life into three very distinct worlds, personal, business, and the wild, or animal world, and he ends up not being at home in any of them.
The people he does business with are buffoons who he has nothing in common with and only uses for their money. He is at a loss as to what to do about his mother as she descends into senility. He hotly denies her accusations of him being "her son the thief", perhaps forgetting his behaviour as a child, that she could well be referring to, and leaves her in the care of a full-time nurse.
As for the natural world, he's about at home in its reality as a tiger is in a city. He doesn't understand the animals in the zoo cages any more than he does the people in his life. He comes face to face with how helpless he really is during a trip to a resort he's developing that happens to be in hurricane country.
How The Dead Dream is an indictment of the shallowness that dominates most people's thinking, and how narrow dreams have become. If we are dead to anything but money and what it can give us, what kind of dreams are we going to have? The answer isn't pretty, but unfortunately far too many of them are coming true. The dead don't care about the living, and evidence of that can be seen each time you breathe in and out and another species dies.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!