In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” by American author Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) is a short story that addresses the themes of Dreams and Disappointment, Destiny and Agency, and Maturity and Responsibility. The story’s unnamed narrator dreams of watching a silent black-and-white movie in an old-fashioned cinema. To his distress, this movie-within-a-dream depicts the day of his parents’ engagement, which led to a disastrously unhappy marriage—and his own troubled life. The story reflects Schwartz’s often autobiographical and confessional style; its narrator is sometimes interpreted as a stand-in for Schwartz himself because the story incorporates several details from his real life. (For example, the mother in the story is named Rose, Schwartz’s mother’s name.) This guide refers to the version of “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” that Iowa Review reprinted in 2014 and that is freely available on the Malverne Jewish Center website.

Written in 1935 and published in 1937, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” takes its title from the epigraph to a poetry collection, Responsibilities, by the celebrated Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The story first appeared in Partisan Review, a then-new literary journal, when Schwartz was only 23. “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” rocketed him to literary fame, remaining his best-known work of fiction. However, his early success proved bittersweet. Though several of his other stories and poems (such as “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me”) are still frequently anthologized, the audience for his work dwindled after the 1940s.

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” employs an unusual point of view. The story is narrated in the first person, but the narrator, dreaming, mainly recounts a version of the day of his parents’ engagement. For much of the story, therefore, his narration imitates an objective, third-person narrator. His descriptions of his parents are precise and detailed as if recorded by an impersonal camera. However, his thoughts and emotions continuously make their way into the narration. He also interacts with a fellow moviegoer and an usher in the dream “theatre.”

The narrator’s dream takes place, he believes, in 1909, a few years before Schwartz’s birth in 1913. In this dream, the narrator watches a jerky silent movie in an old-fashioned cinema. The movie shows his father walking to the Brooklyn home of his mother, Rose, to pick her up for a date. As he walks, the narrator’s father reflects optimistically on his future and debates whether he should propose marriage to Rose. He arrives at her house early, and her family receives him with a mix of respect, amusement, and concern, remarking, “He is impressive, yet he is very awkward” (Paragraph 6). Rose’s father fears the young man will make a bad match for his daughter.

After some technical trouble with the film is cleared up, the narrator’s father and mother leave for a date at Coney Island. They discuss a novel Rose is reading, and though the narrator’s father hasn’t read it, he takes arrogant delight in “approv[ing] and condemn[ing] the behavior of” the characters (Paragraph 8). The father also boasts of his income, exaggerating the figure. The narrator begins to weep at the movie as his parents arrive at Coney Island.

On the boardwalk, the couple debates conflicting “theories” of health and nutrition. The turbulent, sunlit ocean makes for a striking scene, but the couple largely ignores it. Their indifference toward the ocean’s beautiful “harshness” makes the narrator burst into tears again. The old lady sitting beside him reassures him that “all of this is only a movie,” but the narrator is overcome and excuses himself to the men’s room (Paragraph 12).

When he returns, the movie shows his parents riding a merry-go-round and going out to dinner. At dinner, the father bribes the waiter for a good table and impresses Rose with his plans for the future. In the excitement of the moment, the father proposes to Rose, who tearfully accepts, saying, “It’s all I’ve wanted from the moment I saw you” (Paragraph 17). Her reaction displeases the father. The narrator stands up and shouts at his on-screen parents, begging them not to go through with the marriage. He claims that their union will result only in “remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous” (Paragraph 17). The old lady shushes him, and he sits down quietly.

In the movie, the parents have their picture taken in a booth on the boardwalk. The photographer can’t get them to pose in a way that satisfies him, and the father loses his patience. The photo turns out poorly. The couple becomes saddened.

The couple argues over whether to go into a fortune-teller’s booth. Finally, the father agrees to try it. When the fortune-teller arrives, however, he storms out and abandons the mother. The mother starts to chase him, but the fortune-teller begs her not to. Overcome with emotion, the narrator again stands and shouts at his parents, demanding to know whether they know what they’re doing. An usher arrives and drags him off, warning that “you can’t carry on like this” and that “everything you do matters too much” (Paragraph 19). The story ends ambiguously, as the narrator wakes on the “bleak winter morning” of his 21st birthday (Paragraph 19).