Awaken the dreamer: An ontology of dreams in the raven cycle, dreamstrider, and the dreamwalker trilogy

Existing scholarship on dreams in Young Adult (YA) Literature tends to revolve around the analysis and understanding of dreams using a psychanalytic approach. Using theorists like Freud and Jung, scholars analyse dreams to predict the future development of the self. My thesis, however, veers away from such psychoanalytic studies and focus more on the ontological and liminal powers of dreams. Within The Raven Cycle, Dreamstrider, and The Dreamwalker Trilogy dreams are used by dreamer protagonists as tools to access a constant state of becoming— the liminal space where the recognition and transformation of the self occurs. The use of dreams, and the dream worlds, as tools for becoming is the focus of my analysis. I argue that dreams are essential as experiential encounters and catalytic phenomena that enable the protagonists to access their state of becoming. By accessing a state of becoming, whilst being entangled with the spatiality of the waking and dreaming worlds, these protagonists enter a cyclical symbiosis with these other worlds—where each dreamer, waking world, and dreaming world, affects the other equally—and it is this cycle of interdependence that is both the finalisation and the beginning of a constant state of becoming