To Sleep Perchance To Dream, Who Knows

To quote the Bard’s famous Hamlet speech that starts “To be or not to be” and I am not even into Shakespeare. I remember having to read Hamlet in high school but this is not about 11th grade English. I want to talk about Ursula K. LeGuin’s short novel, The Lathe of Heaven, which may be 12th grade English or even Comp II in college.

The Lathe of Heaven is a novel about dreaming. Most of us do not remember our nightly dreams. Some of us are awaken from our dreams and they are so vivid that we are sure that what happened is real. I have even been caught in a dream loop where the same terrible thing happens over and over and no matter what we do to solve the issue, the outcome is the same. I was however running a 102º fever at the time and suffering from strep throat. Again, I am receding from the topic.

The main character George Orr is a dreamer. But what he dreams becomes reality. The book starts with the end of the world. Man has finally decided that the nuclear option is best and the world explodes in a blast of radioactive destruction. As George Orr is dying, he is bathed in radiation and falls into a deadly sleep. As he dies, he dreams the world back to a time before the deadly rain of radiation. When he awakens, the world has changed slightly, but it is back the way it was, almost.

George starts to find that what he dreams changes the world but only he remembers it. First it is little things and then events start to get bigger. George starts taking medication to stay awake and finally gets caught in the system as a drug addict. He is ordered by the courts to see a psychiatrist to help him with his problem. Dr. Haber hypnotizes him with the key word to bring him out being Antwerp. They doctor suggests that he will not be effected by the changes George makes and will remember before and after. He causes George to dream and low and behold, George can change things.

Haber realizes George’s power and starts to use it for his own benefit but with disastrous results. He wants to halt the population explosion that is happening so he orders George to dream and solve it. George dreams a plague that kills a chunk of the population. The doctor has George solve the race issue but George turns a large portion of the human population gray. The doctor tries to solve the constant bickering between nations and George dreams up aliens that invade the Earth. No matter what the doctor does to fix things, George’s solution makes them worse.

So Dr. Haber comes up with a solution of his own. Since George is obviously inferior and cannot handle fixing such simple problems, the doctor studies George and finds a way to both cure him and take the power to dream reality. The doctor puts George into a hypnotic trance and orders him to dream that the doctor has his power and he no longer has it.

The doctor, in an effort to right every wrong, drives himself insane while he is dreaming and causes havoc in the world of reality. But George Orr is cured. Of course that is what he wanted all along.

The book is short but very readable. There is a love interest for George that due to his dreams, he must continually reintroduce himself to. All in all, a fun read. The read, perchance to dream who knows.

Icool

Cobb