{"id":39,"date":"2022-04-04T00:40:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T07:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/?p=39"},"modified":"2022-04-04T00:40:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T07:40:13","slug":"week-12-agualusa-the-society-of-reluctant-dreamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/2022\/04\/04\/week-12-agualusa-the-society-of-reluctant-dreamers\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 12, Agualusa, “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jose Eduardo Agualusa\u2019s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers <\/em>was a very interesting read. It felt surreal in one hand, but also had a lot of relatable, applicable lessons to take away as a reader.<\/p>\n

The first thing that stood out to me was protagonist Daniel Benchimol\u2019s unstable state. Although in the early pages Benchimol stated \u201cI discovered I was able to live on almost nothing and be happy. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been as happy as I was back then,\u201d Benchimol\u2019s life \u2013 as a husband, father, and journalist \u2013 wasn\u2019t successful (albeit the term \u201csuccessful\u201d is only subjective) (12). Particularly interesting was his role as a father to his daughter, Karinguiri. I felt sorry for Benchimol when his ex-wife Lucrecia blamed him for the arrest of their daughter Karinguiri, stating \u201cthis is all your fault, you\u2019re the one who gets her going, with that armchair revolutionary talk of yours.\u201d I felt sorry because as Benchimol himself stated, he knew \u201cit was true\u201d (116). Benchimol, though he did not explicitly state this, would have felt guilty for his daughter\u2019s suffering \u2013 going on a hunger strike in prison.<\/p>\n

However, this sorry feeling changed when I read what Karinguiri had to say about this matter. In a letter to her father, Karinguiri stated, \u201cI\u2019ve ended up in this prison because I decided to be Angolan. I\u2019m fighting for my citizenship. [\u2026] Fear isn\u2019t a choice. There\u2019s no way to avoid feeling fear. And yet we can choose not to give in to it. My companions and I have chosen to fight against fear\u201d (217). Although Karinguiri might have been suffering physically, I think she was living true to where her heart was leading; she was doing what she believed was right, to get her world closer to happiness. In this way, I dropped my sorry feeling for Benchimol; instead, I was inspired by Karinguiri. Her life \u201cdivided between different worlds\u201d and her fight for \u201cthe Angola of the poor\u201d inspired me (216-217). In a way, it almost seems like Benchimol\u2019s revolutionary talks laid the foundation for Karinguiri to \u201cdream\u201d \u2013 to dream of democracy, and a world for the poor majority of Angola. It is this other meaning of \u201cdream\u201d \u2013 as in an ambition or ideal in reality \u2013 that caught my attention, despite all the other talks about nightly dreams. In my interpretation, I think this other meaning of \u201cdream\u201d \u2013 especially relating to Karinguiri\u2019s story \u2013 is worth nothing.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the more conventional meaning of dream \u2013 relating to sleep \u2013 also interested me. Specifically, the sleep imaging machine caught my attention. The idea wasn\u2019t new, as I\u2019ve heard of machines similar to that before, but it certainly was frightening. Knowing that dreams \u201cexpress our forbidden desires,\u201d as it was said in the lecture, the thought of this dream-imaging machine seemed to cruel.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/strong> On page 171, it is stated \u201cit might be possible for us to remember future events, if they\u2019re very important or very traumatic.\u201d On a similar note, the book suggests that \u201cforeshadowing dreams\u201d can be true. Do you think this idea of a \u201cforeshadowing dream\u201d was mentioned in a literal way \u2013 as in, do you think the author actually believed this idea was plausible? Or did the author want to imply a parallel between dreams and literature, trying to suggest that literature can affect the future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jose Eduardo Agualusa\u2019s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers was a very interesting read. It felt surreal in one hand, but also had a lot of relatable, applicable lessons to take away as a reader. The first thing that stood out to me was protagonist Daniel Benchimol\u2019s unstable state. Although in the early pages Benchimol stated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89812,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[58,57,56,37,6,49,25,13,14,38],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agualusa","tag-democracy","tag-dictatorship","tag-dreams","tag-family","tag-literature","tag-politics","tag-relationship","tag-surrealism","tag-temporality","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst202blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}