Reconstructing Reality in the Kiswahili Novel: The Role of Dreams in Euphrase Kezilahabi and Said Ahmed Mohamed’s Novels
Dr. Miriam Kenyani Osore

Abstract
Many scholars and researchers have argued that dreams are important symbolic forms. They contend that dreams are a ?royal road to the Interpretation of the Unconscious?. Sigmund Freud argues that dreams transcend wish-fulfilling discourses; thus, in a significant way, dreams portray actual situations in a symbolic form. Freud further argues that dreams have a meaning accessible to interpretation and that they have a function. Dreams are expressions of wishes and defences. Therefore the motive behind a dream is a repressed conscious wish which comes into contact with a thought or train of thoughts during the course of the day. The physicist, Albert Einstein, is considered one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. However, his big breakthrough “Theory of Relativity” came to him, in a dream. After the dream, Einstein realized that secrets had been revealed to him, but he needed to understand what they meant. This means that dreams are an important aspect of human behaviour and must be subjected to analysis in order to unveil their latent meaning. When dreams are utilized in literary works, they foreground meaning. It is in this context that the paper seeks to analyze dreams. The paper argues that the authors under study borrow from their social perspective of dream to attempt to give an interpretation of phenomena. Specifically, it is apparent that dreams are utilized as a way of acknowledging other ways of seeing the world other than science in an African context. Dreams cannot be analyzed by examining one element but an entire discourse of the dream. It is in this context that the paper utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis Theory (CDA). In the interpretation, dreams are treated as discourses. In order for these to be fruitfully analyzed, the entire socio-cultural and communicative context is central.

Full Text: PDF