ychologically suppressed ambitions:"Obviously, he was from a structure background, born into an ordered world where formalities counted much among the gentry... Truly, Farquhar found himself inhibited by social and historical strictures, and so ‘longed for the release of his energies'" (Powers p.279) . This inner struggle is a very Freudian concept. Freud held that there is a constant tension between man and his surroundings. In particular, a conflict between his needs and desires, and the demands of society. He also stated that the conscious is only a very small part of the human mind, there is are deeper waters than the thoughts we have access to, he called the thoughts below the surface our subconscious, and according to Freud the map to our subconscious lies in our dreams. Freud determined that all dreams are wish fulfillments(Gaarder p.431-435). Peyton's dreamed escape reveals his wish to escape, not only from death, but from the demands, and censorship of his society. The structure also serves to give a feeling of a distorted, yet believable reality and time much like that of a dream. The theme of comparing life, or death in this example, is one used throughout the history of literature. The Spanish dramatist Calderon de la Barca, wrote a play called, Life is a Dream, in which he says: "What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, (this is strikingly similar to Shakespeare's words in Macbeth,: ‘Life is but a walking shadow...') a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream." This theme is also present in a play called Jeppe on the Mount by Ludwig Holdberg. The story goes that Jeppe falls asleep in a ditch, and wakes up in the Baron's bed. He therefore thinks that he only dreamed that he was a poor farmhand. Then he falls asleep again and is carried back to the ditch. He then thinks he only dreamed he was lying in the Baron's bed. This theme is found even f...
