Requiem Review
A long time ago, people spoke of a legendary paradise on earth. It was a place where you would never have troubles. You would be surrounded by your loved ones. You would have complete freedom from the horrible things in this world. Nothing would ever harm you. You would fall in love “the one”, and have a magical, perfect marriage. Your children would grow up in that perfect house, with that perfect yard and that perfect fence. There would be no sorrows, only peace and happiness. There would be a happy ending.
As Ernst Hemingway said, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Everyone at some point has experienced the mythical vision of the Great American Dream. At the core of every human being is a passionate desire and longing to be happy. Some will go to great lengths to find this everlasting happiness. They will fall asleep inside the Great American Dream. They will do what they have to do in order to have the Dream become a reality. Some will go so far as to sell their very souls to a hell they never saw coming in order to continue sleeping…until they realize that the Dream has kept them in a permanent slumber, and it is too late to wake up.
This is the genius and central theme of Hubert Selby, Jr. Selby’s novel, Requiem for a Dream is the tale of four people in search of the Dream, and the discovery of unspeakable horrors. It is a masterpiece that, as the title suggests, mourns the daily passing of thousands of Americans as they strive for that Great American Dream. And on a universal scale, it is a voice of warning to those who allow an imaginary light to guide their lives.
By analysis of the story’s structure itself, it is clear that no character is the hero, nor are the characters heroes themselves. Instead, the hero of the story is Addiction. In the words of Darren Aronofsky, director of the movie adaptation, the entire work is “a manifesto on Addiction’s triumph over the Human Spirit.” The enemy, a nemesis that lives in the minds of the characters, serves as the dreadful monster in a heart-stopping horror story.
Beginning the book requires some strenuous reading, for the grammatical syntax of the novel is extremely jarred. There are no chapter headings nor dialogue indentations and quote marks. Words such as “I’ll” and “we’re” read as “I/ll” and “we/re”. It is sometimes difficult to tell who is talking in the beginning, though you eventually get used to sensing the different personalities and voices of each character. Sentences run on for miles; one sentence went for a paragraph (if there were paragraphs…), another went for a whole page. The longest sentence in the book was approximately four pages long. The scenes are marked in vivid, hardcore detail. The events seem to flash and jump off the page sparatically in living and breathing color. Sometimes there are broken-down descriptions of common things, such as when evening is described as “the sun was down which made it night time.” The whole book reads as if you are in an altered state of mind like a junkie, and some breathers from reading the text may be required for some. For others, it will be difficult to get over the language, and the arresting nature of the narrative itself. Reading this book is not for the faint of heart. The reading in and of itself is an experience.
Requiem for a Dream traces the lives of an elderly widow named Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Marion, who is his girlfriend, and his best friend Tyrone. Out of loneliness, Sara wants to feel loved. She feels she can achieve such attention and love if she was on television. It is her dream to be a guest star on one of the game shows she spends her entire day watching. From sun up to sun down, Sara does nothing but watch television and overeat. Her son Harry is a heroin addict, along with the rest of his friends. He spends his time getting hits, but his goal is to open up a coffee house shop with Marion, happily married and eventually off the drugs. Marion hopes to eventually become a best-selling artist with her artwork. Tyrone desires to escape his terrible past and live a peaceful life somewhere quiet where there are, as he says, “no hassles.”
Over the course of the novel, each person goes through incredible means to obtain their dreams. When Sara receives a call to appear on a game show, she immediately invests in diet books and dying her hair. As the story progresses, the dreamers get worse. Harry, Marion and Tyrone find a get-rich-quick scheme by scoring some uncut heroin to begin trafficking to the masses. Sara indulges in diet pills in order to lose weight faster. Each character experiences haunting, dreamlike realities where they convince themselves that each wrong turn will eventually turn out right. Sara’s reality seems the worst: “…Her face started to squeeze itself into a grin and she decided…to tell the ladies about how good her Harry was doing with his own business and a fiancée and how she/ll soon be a grandmother. It was a happy ending.” Slowly but quickly, each character is blindly led to one horrific tragedy after another that only the reader can see. By the end of the novel, each character has found a fate worse than death itself; a hellhole to rot in for the rest of their lives.
The ending, frequently foreshadowed throughout the story, is tragedy at its best. The full implications are realized as the narrative describes, “Whatever chances they had to take they took automatically as their disease ordered and they obeyed, a small part of tem wanting to try to resist, but that part shoved so far down that it was no more than an ancient dream from a previous life. Only the insatiable and insane need of the moment had any bearing on their lives, and it was that need that gave the orders.”
The lessons learned from the doomed characters will stay with the reader forever. A teenager who reads this book will have the living daylights scared out of ever taking pills or drugs, or being addicted to television, eating, sleeping, or anything else that can become addictive. If it were up to me, I would personally edit the book down to a reader’s edition and make it required reading for every high school student. No teenager should be without this story or its vital message.
And what is that message? That the Great American Dream has quickly become the Great American Nightmare. In his novel Go Now, Richard Hell writes:
“You take for granted what you have and you can't take it with you when you die. There is never enough and you will always want more. No matter how much you learn, no matter how much you earn, you are still yourself and exactly as close to the edge as where you began. And all you can ever learn is what you already know. You will always want to know what the ending is, but you can't because you're dead.”
This is what Selby writes about in his prophetic vision of a future America where Harrys, Marions, Saras and Tyrones abound in an existence we shudder to even think about. Yet everyday the news is a testament to the rising casuality rates in this Great American Disease. It is a calamity and an impending doom that is taking America by storm, and soon the world. If we do not stop it, no one will. Requiem for a Dream is not just a moral lesson to never take drugs. It is a powerful reminder of how much destruction a fake dream can have, and the importance of having the right dream, and not just a good one.
Selby remarks at the end of his forward, "Ultimatly, I don't think there will ever be a requiem for the Dream because it will destroy us before we have a chance to mourn its passing. But perhaps time will prove me wrong. As Mr. Hemingway says, 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"
As Ernst Hemingway said, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Everyone at some point has experienced the mythical vision of the Great American Dream. At the core of every human being is a passionate desire and longing to be happy. Some will go to great lengths to find this everlasting happiness. They will fall asleep inside the Great American Dream. They will do what they have to do in order to have the Dream become a reality. Some will go so far as to sell their very souls to a hell they never saw coming in order to continue sleeping…until they realize that the Dream has kept them in a permanent slumber, and it is too late to wake up.
This is the genius and central theme of Hubert Selby, Jr. Selby’s novel, Requiem for a Dream is the tale of four people in search of the Dream, and the discovery of unspeakable horrors. It is a masterpiece that, as the title suggests, mourns the daily passing of thousands of Americans as they strive for that Great American Dream. And on a universal scale, it is a voice of warning to those who allow an imaginary light to guide their lives.
By analysis of the story’s structure itself, it is clear that no character is the hero, nor are the characters heroes themselves. Instead, the hero of the story is Addiction. In the words of Darren Aronofsky, director of the movie adaptation, the entire work is “a manifesto on Addiction’s triumph over the Human Spirit.” The enemy, a nemesis that lives in the minds of the characters, serves as the dreadful monster in a heart-stopping horror story.
Beginning the book requires some strenuous reading, for the grammatical syntax of the novel is extremely jarred. There are no chapter headings nor dialogue indentations and quote marks. Words such as “I’ll” and “we’re” read as “I/ll” and “we/re”. It is sometimes difficult to tell who is talking in the beginning, though you eventually get used to sensing the different personalities and voices of each character. Sentences run on for miles; one sentence went for a paragraph (if there were paragraphs…), another went for a whole page. The longest sentence in the book was approximately four pages long. The scenes are marked in vivid, hardcore detail. The events seem to flash and jump off the page sparatically in living and breathing color. Sometimes there are broken-down descriptions of common things, such as when evening is described as “the sun was down which made it night time.” The whole book reads as if you are in an altered state of mind like a junkie, and some breathers from reading the text may be required for some. For others, it will be difficult to get over the language, and the arresting nature of the narrative itself. Reading this book is not for the faint of heart. The reading in and of itself is an experience.
Requiem for a Dream traces the lives of an elderly widow named Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Marion, who is his girlfriend, and his best friend Tyrone. Out of loneliness, Sara wants to feel loved. She feels she can achieve such attention and love if she was on television. It is her dream to be a guest star on one of the game shows she spends her entire day watching. From sun up to sun down, Sara does nothing but watch television and overeat. Her son Harry is a heroin addict, along with the rest of his friends. He spends his time getting hits, but his goal is to open up a coffee house shop with Marion, happily married and eventually off the drugs. Marion hopes to eventually become a best-selling artist with her artwork. Tyrone desires to escape his terrible past and live a peaceful life somewhere quiet where there are, as he says, “no hassles.”
Over the course of the novel, each person goes through incredible means to obtain their dreams. When Sara receives a call to appear on a game show, she immediately invests in diet books and dying her hair. As the story progresses, the dreamers get worse. Harry, Marion and Tyrone find a get-rich-quick scheme by scoring some uncut heroin to begin trafficking to the masses. Sara indulges in diet pills in order to lose weight faster. Each character experiences haunting, dreamlike realities where they convince themselves that each wrong turn will eventually turn out right. Sara’s reality seems the worst: “…Her face started to squeeze itself into a grin and she decided…to tell the ladies about how good her Harry was doing with his own business and a fiancée and how she/ll soon be a grandmother. It was a happy ending.” Slowly but quickly, each character is blindly led to one horrific tragedy after another that only the reader can see. By the end of the novel, each character has found a fate worse than death itself; a hellhole to rot in for the rest of their lives.
The ending, frequently foreshadowed throughout the story, is tragedy at its best. The full implications are realized as the narrative describes, “Whatever chances they had to take they took automatically as their disease ordered and they obeyed, a small part of tem wanting to try to resist, but that part shoved so far down that it was no more than an ancient dream from a previous life. Only the insatiable and insane need of the moment had any bearing on their lives, and it was that need that gave the orders.”
The lessons learned from the doomed characters will stay with the reader forever. A teenager who reads this book will have the living daylights scared out of ever taking pills or drugs, or being addicted to television, eating, sleeping, or anything else that can become addictive. If it were up to me, I would personally edit the book down to a reader’s edition and make it required reading for every high school student. No teenager should be without this story or its vital message.
And what is that message? That the Great American Dream has quickly become the Great American Nightmare. In his novel Go Now, Richard Hell writes:
“You take for granted what you have and you can't take it with you when you die. There is never enough and you will always want more. No matter how much you learn, no matter how much you earn, you are still yourself and exactly as close to the edge as where you began. And all you can ever learn is what you already know. You will always want to know what the ending is, but you can't because you're dead.”
This is what Selby writes about in his prophetic vision of a future America where Harrys, Marions, Saras and Tyrones abound in an existence we shudder to even think about. Yet everyday the news is a testament to the rising casuality rates in this Great American Disease. It is a calamity and an impending doom that is taking America by storm, and soon the world. If we do not stop it, no one will. Requiem for a Dream is not just a moral lesson to never take drugs. It is a powerful reminder of how much destruction a fake dream can have, and the importance of having the right dream, and not just a good one.
Selby remarks at the end of his forward, "Ultimatly, I don't think there will ever be a requiem for the Dream because it will destroy us before we have a chance to mourn its passing. But perhaps time will prove me wrong. As Mr. Hemingway says, 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"
posted by Alexander at 10:13 PM
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