Since the last blog post, Orr gets into another dream, one that was suppose to end the war going on and to make peace for all humans. That did happen but the consequences of bringing all the humans together in peace was that they stopped fighting each other so that they can fight a new threat... aliens. Aliens have invaded the moon and has become a threat to all of mankind, which brings all of mankind to come together to fight this one common enemy. Orr fights with Dr. Haber about this and eventually leaves, and doesn't come back for a week. The lawyer, Heather, then starts to look for him because she had sudden urges to go back to her old workplace from the old reality instead of the new one in the current reality. She then meets up with Orr and discusses the whole reality changes idea. She admits that she believes it because she remembers the old reality and is having anxiety over the changes in the current one. Eventually she suggests that she will put him to sleep and tell him to dream about Dr. Haber becoming a better man so that he wouldn't use Orr anymore and she also tells him to dream about the aliens no longer being on the moon. Then, she does her night routine happily until everything becomes dark and she could hear sirens in the background. She panics and tries to wake Orr up. When Orr does, he says that the aliens left the moon and invaded Earth. Meanwhile, panic is everywhere and there is a lot of death. Dr. Haber is panicking and trying to find Orr so that they can undo the chaos that is occurring. They meet up and right before the aliens attack the office, Dr. Haber quickly puts Orr to sleep and tells him to dream about peace. Then the aliens break open into the office and Dr. Haber expects to die. Then, the aliens explain that they didn't mean any harm and that they equipped no weapons for any type of war. The aliens didn't intend to inflict any type of harm onto the aliens. Dr. Haber is relieved and Orr wakes up. The conflict dies down and eventually the aliens and humans were able to coexist peacefully. Orr does a couple more dreams with Dr. Haber to make life more peaceful and eventually the world was prosperous and filled with grey people. (To remove racial discrimination.) However, because of this, multiple people began to cease to exist, including Heather, due to the change of history in the current reality. This causes a fight between Dr. Haber and Orr, which Orr leaves and becomes depressed. He eventually meets a alien at a antique store who gives him advice and a disk of music that contains the sound "With a little help from my friends" by the Beatles. Still depressed, he walked home and played this there. He fell asleep to it and in the morning, he was able to meet Heather again but this time, she was grey too. They apparently became married in this new reality. Then, they go to Dr. Haber's office one last time because he just needs one visit with Orr to finish his research. He does that and helps Orr with what Orr wanted all this time which was to remove the capability of changing reality with his dreams so that he could dream normally again. This worked and they left the office excitedly! Dr. Haber was happy because he got all the research out of Orr that he needed and he was going to continue his research by doing it with himself. Orr then asks Heather on a date and that could've been the end of the story. However, something goes wrong with reality because of Dr. Haber's experiment and Orr started to panic. He left Heather to stay behind and he ran to the office. When he got into the office, he ran to press the off button. Then, he blackened out and when he woke up, he saw that everyone's colors were back and they weren't gray. It seemed like almost everything turned back to how it was before the visits with
Dr. Haber. With some few exceptions with some people in the world were still gray but most got their color back and the aliens were still coexisting with humans. However, despite how much Orr looked, he couldn't find Heather. He became depressed again and got a job with the alien he talked to earlier. He spent the rest of his time there and eventually, he was able to spot a woman who was carrying some eggs. She looked like Heather so Orr decided to talk to her. Apparently it was Heather but she had a different name and was a legal secretary instead of a lawyer. She remember Orr but only up to when he was doing therapy and when he was asking to get out of Dr. Haber's control. However, she couldn't remember much of anything else related to the realities. Orr explained how he got out of therapy and how he was done with the dream business. Despite Heather being more of a stranger than a wife, he was still content and happy to see Heather being alive again! They had a wonderful talk and asked Heather if she wanted a cup of coffee at the cafe across the street. She agreed and they walked away from the store... THE END! This book had a clear theme of morals and decisions. This was shown in the book by having Orr dreams of these different realities that were based off of a certain topic Dr. Haber told him before Orr dreamt of the new reality. The different realities questioned your morals because Dr. Haber was intentionally using his dreams to change the world for the better, at least in his mind. Though we watch the world change in Orr's perspective and it is not as desirable as Dr. Haber thought it would be. The idea sounded good on paper but when put into execution, the reality that was shown was not as pleasant as they hoped. I also see this theme in real life where there are conflicting morals between people and it's hard to figure out which one will be the correct solution or not. In both the book and in real life, sometimes your morals get challenged and it's hard to figure out which option would be best for you and everyone else. Sometimes things don't work out for everyone and one solution might help someone but will hurt the other. It's a common theme I see in the book and in real life so it's really cool to see the book be able to express those emotions out of the viewer and to make them question their thinking. This book left me speechless. The characters in the book were very well written and this book really makes you question a lot. You think about how it would be great for the world to not be overpopulated and for racial discrimination to never had existed but this book shows you an example of that and makes you question if even the bad stuff is sometimes required in life to keep everything balanced and happy. If it were to never have happened, people would never learn and fight through experience. If conflict never existed, we would never learned freedom. The book makes you reflect if a "Utopia" is really what everyone wants and if a Utopia for one person is the Utopia for everyone. The Utopia in the book was where everyone became grey because everyone in the world were just together. The population was lowered from previous events and the cities became prosperous. There was a no overpopulation, no poverty, no racial discrimination due to everyone being the same color, and there was no conflict or wars in the whole history of the human race. This happened due to one of the forced dreams Dr. Haber made Orr to dream, which forced this dream into reality. On paper, this world seemed like the perfect Utopia and Dr. Haber was an absolute genius for making it. However would that be truly a Utopia? Sure you removed some problems but the world became plain. The food had no taste and there isn't any variety to the world. There is also low chances of getting illnesses and cancer became basically instinct in this "Utopia", however they did this by "Controlled Killings" by the government by those who might be ill which would be considered immoral if it didn't have a benefit to it. It makes you question a lot like, would it be better to kill off a couple people who are ill to make sure the whole rest of the world is sickness free or would you let them live and risk the chance of the illness to spread. This book talks about these topics all the time and it's really interesting to question your morals to see the positives and negatives to each scenario. Honestly I can just go on for days about how much this book really makes you think and question how the best scenario for life is. One thing I got out of this book is that, there can never really be a real Utopia, one that benefits everyone and can make them happy. We can always try to make the world better but we should never take the control from people and their lives. However, that control can cause consequences and pain for others. Each and every good solution you think of has positive consequences and negative consequences and there is never a true good answer. Every action you take will hurt someone or some thing but it will also help someone or something. This book showed me that there is a two sides for everything and that even if you have the best of intentions, you should never have any control of anyone else's life except your own. I would love to talk more about this but I would instead recommend you to read the book yourself. This book was incredible and it allows you to think very deeply about reality. How the past can affect the present and depending on the action we take, the reality as we know it can change. If I had more time, I would reread this book and just get lost in the concepts and philosophies they mention! Unlike other books I read, this book seems like a book I could read again without getting bored. With other books, they have a story, beginning to end and if you know it already, why bother? Though, this book is just very intriguing with the content they bring that I feel like if I read again, I could just get lost in it just like the first time I read it! I would definitely recommend this book who is interested in concepts of dreams and different realities because this book did a wonderful job illustrating different concepts and philosophies about them. I would love to say so much more but I think it would be best to have someone read this book because it sure is an interesting experience! "When I read The Lathe of Heaven as a young man, my mind was boggled; now when I read it, more than twenty-five years later, it breaks my heart. Only a great work of literature can bridge--- so thrillingly--- that impossible span." --- Michael Chabon I will comment on Rachna's, Matthew's, & Maddi's blogs!
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A lot has changed since I last read. Since then, Orr went to a couple more appointments but Orr is slowly coming to conclusion that Dr. Haber was taking advantage of him and his power to alter reality with his dreams. He confronts a lawyer about this, which she doesn't believe his story but is intrigued anyways. They then agree that the lawyer would visit their session as someone who is hired by the government to make sure that the activities in the session are within the human rights for the patient. They both arrive at the facility and they do the normal routine except Dr. Haber talks about overpopulation and how it is a bad situation before he puts Orr to sleep. Then, the reality changes and the lawyer gets completely frozen in shock. But after a while, the lawyer forgets and the visit ends...
This reminds me of some research I did beforehand on dreams and how it is important for the body and how they might be created so it was interesting to see the connections to real life studies to the book. Like how there is a light sleep and a deep sleep in real life and there is s-sleep, d-sleep, and all kinds of sleep in the book. It's very interesting to compare the two and see the similarities with them! Overpopulation was a big problem in this book and in real life. Overpopulation was a concern for many and it has undesirable effects for Dr. Haber so he decided to decrease the population because of that. Using, the power Orr has with his dreams affecting reality, he decreased 7 billion people to just one hundred thousand people with one dream! Afterwards, he was able to drink some alcohol that wasn't available earlier because of supplies being low to help everyone. This reminds of the struggles of housing and supplies that we have in real life because we have a huge population and we also have to worry about the threat of a nuclear war, just like what happened in the book... I will comment on Rachna's & Matthew's blogs! This book takes place on Earth and the main character, Mr. Orr gets sent to this medical and mental health facility where he meets Dr. Haber who does some tests with him. Mr. Orr was taking drugs to suppress the dreams he had and Dr. Haber's goal is to convince Mr. Orr to stop taking those drugs. However it's harder than it seems for him because Mr. Orr believes that his dreams can affect the outside world and that dreams are made by emotions from your unsocialized self so his unconscious selfish desires come true into reality with his dreams. He has been taking drugs to suppress those dreams even since then but the doctor still tries to see if they can help him. Dr. Haber then suggests that Mr. Orr should dream right in front of him to determine the results of his dreams. Dr. Haber puts the man to sleep and makes him dream of a horse. Mr. Orr does that and after he wakes up, it is revealed that the mural in the room was a horse, the same one he dreamed of. Though, the mural was actually of a mountain before his dream and Dr. Haber, at first, had problems remembering the mountain. Then after a few seconds, forgets the painting of a mountain and automatically accepted the horse mural as reality. He had a backstory for the mural and everything. So it's really interesting to see how Mr. Orr is thought to be a crazy person but can actually alter reality against his will.
I haven't read a dystopian novel before but this novel is very intriguing to me. I am going to assume that this book is different compared to other dystopian books due to its focus on psychological concepts and philosophy about dreams. I think it's very interesting and I get absorbed into the science and philosophy of this book. The discussion about dreams and why they are important stood out to me. The new technology they have for dreams and the equipment they have are also very interesting like the Augmentor, the machine that can make records of people's dreams. It's such a interesting world in the book and I can't wait to read more! The book takes place on Earth and the world is still suffering from pollution in the air, just like the reality we live in. The effects of climate change are taking an effect on the environment in the book. (Pg. 27) I will comment on Rachna's and Matthew E's blog! |
AuthorI am a big video gamer and video game enthusiast. I love a lot of video games and I am currently playing Miitopia! Archives
June 2018
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