SH+P6+2013+Robert+Louis+Stevenson’s+essay+“A+Chapter+on+Dreams”


 * A Chapter on Dreams **
 * an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson **
 * Research done by Mason Zerbe **


 * A Chapter on Dreams is an Essay Written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1892. It was one of multiple works done by Robert Stevenson others include A Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Story of a Lie, Treasure Island, The Body Snatcher, Catorina, and many more. A Chapter on Dreams is about a dreamer whose dreams haunted him as a child and eventually used them to write stories. One can see the fear of the child when it states, “ He was from a child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer” (stevenson 178). **


 * AIM **
 * The purpose of the text is to show the author’s life without being an autobiography. At the end he states that the dreamer that he was talking about was him. As seen at this point in the essay, “Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer that, for he is no less a person than myself”(Stevenson 187). However despite that being the obvious aim of the text he may have been hinting at a deeper meaning; in the first paragraph Stevenson talks about memory and how it can falter. Some text to support that is, “A man's claim to his own past is yet less valid” (Stevenson 178). Later he goes to talk about how all the information we have about ourselves come from our memory and if you go far enough back you won’t know things about yourself. Another theme that he may have been trying to address is that we can’t be sure about anything we know. His point in writing this essay, which is about him is not to explain his life, but to explain where he got some of the ideas to such amazing works, and also to show not everything is as it seems. **


 * Audience **


 * The audience could be a many things. It could be to anyone wishing to understand him more, or maybe he is targeting other dreamers. Another point he might be making towards the audience is that some of his stories were loosely based on his life. In the essay Stevenson talks about perception and what is really going on and relates to the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I had long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being” (Stevenson 188). He wants to tell everyone that has read his book about what the themes are and how he came up with them. **


 * Historical **


 * Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 and died at the age of 44. It is not clear if this work will survive for decades to come, but it is clear that some of his works will and this one talks about those so it will most likely still be popular in the future. He may not have been inspired to write this because of historical events, it was more personal historic because it tells how he came up with some of the ideas for stories. Something else to notice is that the plot of his example in the essay which is about the dreamer, who experiences things that his books are written about, but stepping back from that the character and him do the same thing, he is both himself and the dreamer in the essay. **


 * Cultural **


 * Stevenson did not change the world with this text, but it could easily change someones view about him and his work. It is clearly a very important text written by him. It gives another view the books such as A Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Traveling Companion. At the end of A Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde it reveals the double life of Dr Jekyll, which is one of his main themes about the dreaming he says that it was hard to distinguish between the two worlds, “to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life—one of the day, one of the night” (Stevenson 180). What he is saying is that he was living in two different worlds and lived many lives, which he put into the plot of multiple of his stories. **

** Works Cited **
 * Robert-Louis-Stevenson. RLS website. Web. n.p. July 25, 2013 **


 * Stevenson, Robert. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Swanston Edition. London: Chatto **
 * and Windus. Print. **