A sense of what is longed for and possible in our future life is generated in an aspirational dream and then shouted out to the world in a song such as “Out of My Dreams” from the musical Oklahoma. Dreams that lead us back in time to a moment when life was much better lead to the impassioned external expression of deep regret in the song “I dreamed a dream one day” from the musical Les Misérables or in the popular depression-era song, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”.
A dream can also serve in a functional capacity. It can teach us something when the dream is realized in visual form as a motion picture. As we, in turn, look to the motion picture as a source of our content for dreams, we find that the movies “have taught the world a new way to dream” (from the musical Sunset Boulevard). One of the lessons dreams have taught us comes in particular from the movies of Walt Disney. We are repeatedly told that if we dream about something, it might very well come to pass. There is a popular song of the early 1940s that tells us to dream, “because it might come true.” This song was first performed in the midst of World War II. Perhaps this was a good time to dream about a somewhat different reality.
When translated from the interior to the exterior, dreams can also teach us about the fragile nature of reality. It is particularly in the production of paintings that we find an exploration of altered realities emerging from the artist’s dreams. Examples over time include the nightmares representations of Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco de Goya, and, more recently, Salvador Dali. We are taught that forms can be bent and time can be altered with only minimal effort in our dreams—and in our waking life. Perhaps, these paintings have portended our contemporary acceptance of “alternative realities” (Weitz and Bergquist, 2025).
Finally, we find an example of false dreams functioning as a vehicle for manipulation in a musical such as Fiddler on the Roof. The protagonist, Tevya, describes a dream to his wife, Golde, in which evil will reign down on them if their daughter marries the butcher—thanks to the butcher’s departed spouse. Once again, the use of dreams to manipulate reality and the resulting decisions to be made might portend what is happening in our mid-21st-century political landscape.
In each of these cases, whether they are a novel, movie, theatrical production, or work of art, the dream becomes a fertile ground for new ways of thinking, envisioning, and even feeling. As noted in a comment made about dreams on the Internet, dreams can serve as psychological mirrors, symbolic landscapes, and narrative catalysts. They can convey moral decay, foreshadow doom, reveal hidden truths, and deepen the audience’s engagement with the characters’ inner worlds. Whether rooted in classical prophetic tradition or modern psychological realism, dreams remain a potent device for exploring the human condition in high-stakes storytelling.
The diverse ways in which dreams are introduced into these art forms speak to the resonance of many dream themes for each of us in our often-challenging world.
