Hallucinations In Selby's Requiem For A Dream

From the creation of harmonies to singing to instruments, music has been an abstract form of human expression. Although an auditory collection of pitches and volumes, musicians can manipulate the same notes and bring them alive for their audiences. The true emotion and energy that’s felt in music really comes from the player as feelings are transferred to and through the listener. This interaction between performer and the house is catharsis, the complete release of strong repressed emotions. Thanks to the musician, music has the ability to grasp people and cause them to sense emotions and feelings without lyrics or images even being necessary. Although it’s believed we can only hear with our ears, something about music makes it emotionally if not physically tangible. In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” a narrator certainly unaware of the impact of music invites himself to experience jazz for the first time. Baldwin uses the final scene of his story to argue that music has an effect on those who are able to experience it. Baldwin does this in one single moment by letting the fixed, practical minded, “well-intentioned” narrator experience catharsis from jazz as his growing, free-spirited brother communicates with him through jazz.

For instance, when Tim ran away he landed at a cabin with a strange man, who brought him on a boat where he has a significant hallucination. “I did try. It wasn’t possible. All those eyes on me-the town, the whole universe-and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment. It was as if there were an audience to my life, that swirl of faces along the river, and in my head I could hear people screaming at me.

A sudden feeling of ecstasy; all of your senses are changed, transformed, falsely seeming to be true. Everything is really wonderful, powerful, creativity flows freely from your mind. You feel indestructible, confident, and prideful. The sun is jolly and as you inhale the air seems to suck through you effortlessly. Everything is blue, no, not blue with melancholy, this blue is "the blue that knows you and where you live and it's never going to forget" (107). The blue is the façade and excitement an addict gets from drugs. Addicts look for an escape, a better life, and something more gratifying, instantly. In Kate Braverman's short story "Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta," she describes one woman's struggle with

Perhaps one of the strongest demonstrations of the power of music in “Sonny’s Blues” is the street revival. Everyone has seen these types of revivals before. Every song has been heard by the crowd, but when the music starts everyone stops, watches, and listens. “As the singing filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on something within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces” (57). The music from the street revival helps lifts the hopelessness from the crowd and provides a sense of relief. Music is able to bring people from all walks of life together. It gives them a sense of calm and ease, an assurance that something is there to help. Music listens.

(1) “While music is changed to language, with the attendant change in meaning and while the obsession is still with bringing light and thus reason, the narrator is opening up the meaning with reference to “we” and to the emotional conditions of suffering and delight.” 1

“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection on her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened - then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”

The role of music is important in the short story “Sonny’s Blue”, by James Baldwin. Sonny is the narrator younger brother and he has a dream of become Musician. When their parents passed away, the narrator felt like he is responsible for his younger brother and taking care of him. The narrator was a teacher and living a stable life. When the narrator was going home, he noticed that one of Sonny’s old friend, who is always dirty and high, was waiting for him in the school. But the narrator pretended like he hates Sonny’s friend who despite his problem. Also, he told the narrator how Sonny’s life was drug addicted and will be continuing like this. Sonny was arrested for selling and using heroin and the narrator was really angry about it. As

Images from the study suggest a greater connectivity across the brain. There is evidence that the visual hallucinations produced by the drug involve not only the visual cortex, but many other parts of the brain. This lack of boundaries are highly segregated and may suggest a mechanism behind the altered state of consciousness experienced by users and the “ego dissolution”, or loss of a sense of self, described by many. (E., R. (201126) 426.)

Thereafter, he started experimenting with drugs while being a part of the counterculture at the time, being rebellious to the strictness of the 1950s. When he took part of a experimental drug program at a Veterans ' Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California. While there he took mind altering LSD and reported back the effects. Interestingly, one of his hallucination is that of a Native American sweeping the floor in the hospital room, obviously being the main inspiration of the novel 's setting. Like his own life, history and involvement in the counter culture aided in the creation and theme of this novel, one is that of control.

The most obvious thing that is important to the character is his adopted daughter, Anna. Throughout the narrative he shows that he cares for her happiness and her health. She is unable to speak clearly and tell her own story, so the character (father) tells it for her. The character is trying to show the reader how effective music can be as a therapy, and is using his own experience to prove the worth of musical therapy. He gives example after example of how music improved the life of his daughter, and how she looks forward to her day with music so eagerly. One line he says, “Ask her a direct question and you will get a stammered word or two at most. Play a song and she will begin to shout out the words, even if she has never heard them before. ”It is a testament to how much music can change her attitude and behaviours. It seems to fill her with confidence and strength where usually she is frail, a picture painted by the quote above.

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” conveys how music serves as a form of communication, both at a small and large scale. Charting the development of the communication between Sonny and his brother allows us to view how the unnamed brother fails to meet Sonny at his emotional level by not understanding his pain. I argue that the text introduces Sonny as someone who “has never been talkative” to set the foundation for his growth from being voiceless to speaking both vibrantly and effortlessly through music (Baldwin 113). Over the course of the text, the unnamed brother begins to listen to Sonny to discover the connection between music and emotion. Therefore, the text argues that music is a crucial mechanism to communicate with one another—more specifically

However, later in the story, the narrator is the one seeing movement and hearing sighs. But as the narrator is an opium addict, the reader also assumes it is a hallucination.

In the movie, Requiem for a Dream, Sara Goldfarb, the mother, experiences hallucinations from taking prescription weight loss drugs. I found an article written by Timothy O’Shea, a pharmacist, and he listed ten of the most dangerous side effects of prescription drugs. Like Sara experienced in the movie, hallucinations

In the story Mr. Elton is discussing the problems about Gerald Bocek with Helena, but before they had started talking Gerald had told Mr. Elton to take a pill and that nothing bad would happen. During Mr. Elton’s conversation with Helena he says, “I took one three years ago when they first became available. You’d be surprised how little you actually see of what you look at, especially of people. You look at symbols instead. I had to cancel my appointments for a week.” Mr. Elton is proving that the pills blurred his sense of reality. This shows that the pills cause hallucination and the reality Gerald is living in is a messed up reality, furthering the argument for why they are on Earth.

The hallucination Goldfarb is experiencing is the refrigerator trying to attack her, a television show host/audience, and her younger self telling her to eat, and the game show not calling her to be on the television show. Goldfarb addresses how these events did not start happening until she starting taking the amphetamines.