Themes, symbols, and characters in "In Dreams Begin Responsibility

Dreams Begin Responsibility, Delmore Schwartz focuses on themes of maturity, responsibility and family. He does this through the interaction of several characters: the son, father, and the merry-go-round. Each of these characters is more than part of the story, though, each is symbolic within its interaction with one another, and the archetype it forms with society and culture.

The Son is the central character of the idea of maturation -- of aging, of maturing, and of the manner in which these events change a person's psychological understanding and reaction to the world. When one is young, nature is vast an strange, as one ages, this changes. "But I stare at the terrible sun, which breaks up sight, and the fatal merciless passionate ocean (513)." Time and emotion remain strangers, but the archetype of the Son means hat one is new to the world and must try to understand the complexity of inter-relationships. ". . . I watch again with thirsty interest, like a child who tries to maintain hi sulk when he is offered the bribe of candy" (515). And most certainly, the aging Son views communication in a black-and-white paradigm, confused by the ways other people seem so happy and yet seconds later, so awkwardly uncomfortable. "I feel as if I were walking tight-rope one hundred feet over a circus audience and suddenly the rope is showing signs of breaking…"(516). This aging is like birth -- sights, smells, and sounds morph into new meanings, many of which remain confusing like a whirlwind of fear.

As an archetype, the Father-figure is typically wise, the one who teaches, the one who instructs, and the one for the Son to emulate. The Father-figure often appears to be in another world, one of important thoughts ad considerations that are too deep for just anyone. "My father has chosen to take this long walk because he likes to walk and think. He thinks about himself in the future and so arrives at the place he is to visit in a mild state of exaltation" (511). Like the anti-hero of the Greek myths, the Father is not always assured. "They [my father and mother] are not yet engaged and he is not sure that he loves my mother, so that, once in a while, when he becomes panicky about the bond already established" (512). But more than anything, almost similar to the idea of The Iliad, the Father now wants to understand the future, but to settle down and form what seems to be an expected societal burden. "He wants to settle down. After all, he is twenty-nine… and is envious of his friends when he visits them in he security of their homes" (514). Father's journey is not just one of thought, though. It is one of a leap of faith, a new way of thinking about the world, and opens up a new challenge for the entire family.

That challenge is often expressed through the endless twisting and turning of the merry-go-round. " . . . [S] several hours have apparently passed and my parents are riding on the merry-go-round" (514). No matter how long one is on the ride, one never really gets anywhere new, but the endless spinning and juxtaposition of life vs. The ride move everyone into an almost ethereal world of optimism and endless possibilities. "…[T]hey seem to be making an eternal circuit for the single purpose of snatching the nickel rings..." (514). In this, the goal is unclear and must be part of some secret adult ritual. Indeed, that there is still the impression of good and evil means that the cycle of the merry-go-round emulates family life, as the color of the horses and sounds from the organ fill the mind with a cacophonous sense of wonder. "My father is on a black horse, my mother on a while one…" (514).