In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

The story’s unnamed narrator has much in common with Delmore Schwartz himself. For instance, both have a mother named Rose, both come from a Brooklyn family, and both have just reached adulthood (Schwartz wrote the story at age 21; the narrator wakes on his 21st birthday). The narrator can therefore be read as a version of Schwartz—but a fictionalized or “unreal” version because he’s narrating a dream. The narrator dreams that he’s sitting in an old-fashioned movie theater, watching a movie about his parents’ courtship and engagement.

This movie/dream causes him great anguish. While watching his parents’ interactions, he repeatedly breaks down crying and shouts at them as if they could hear. At one point, he excuses himself from the theater and is finally dragged out by an usher. His anguish has an existential quality: He believes his parents should never have married and that, therefore, he and his unnamed sibling should not have been born. He regrets his entire life and wishes he could undo it. When his parents get engaged, he shouts “Don’t do it” at the screen, voicing an absurd, helpless frustration (Paragraph 17).

The narrator is a very passive protagonist, primarily in the background of a larger