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The Mother
The father lives in the basement apartment with his wife (the mother) and their two children (the girl and her brother). He works during the day, then studies toward his degree at night. The father’s trumpet and his writing left out in the lounge contrasts with the mother’s neatly put-away sewing machine, demonstrating the father’s relative freedom to pursue his creative and academic interests while his wife appears to prioritize keeping an orderly home. He seems unaware that his wife resentments him, given his physical affection toward her despite her privately held conclusion that he wants to undermine her domestic efforts.
The Father Quotes in Bad Dreams
The Bad Dreams quotes below are all either spoken by The Father or refer to The Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Bad Dreams Quotes
[…] sometimes she felt a pang of fear for her father, as if he were exposed and vulnerable […]. She never feared in the same way for her mother: her mother was capable; she was the whole world.
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Perhaps he’d like bacon for his breakfast—she had saved up her housekeeping to buy him some. His mother had cooked bacon for him every morning.
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This time, for once, she was clearly in the right, wasn’t she? He had been childish, giving way to his frustration—as if she didn’t feel fed up sometimes. And he criticised her for her bad temper!
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[…] she seemed to see the future with great clarity, looking forward through a long tunnel of antagonism, in which her husband was her enemy. This awful truth appeared to be something she had always known, though in the past it had been clouded in uncertainty and now she saw it starkly.
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But he came at some point to stand behind his wife at the stove and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck, kissing her behind her ear, and she leaned back into his kiss, as she always did, tilting her head to give herself to him.
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The Father Character Timeline in Bad Dreams
The timeline below shows where the character The Father appears in Bad Dreams. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Bad Dreams
...lounge, the moonlight bounces off the frame of the girl’s parents’ wedding photo and her father’s trumpet in its open case. The girl touches the gramophone and the piles of handwritten...
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...doesn’t hear anything. She sits up carefully, so she doesn’t wake her husband (the girl’s father). The room is the same as it was when she went to sleep, except that...
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...won’t be able to move into a house of their own until her husband (the father) finishes his degree. She goes to the bathroom and then returns to the bedroom, looking...
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...both fast asleep. She reaches the only conclusion she thinks is possible: her husband (the father), who can be moody at times, must’ve been frustrated with his work, or maybe the...
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...she’s surely in the right for being angry. This new information about her husband (the father) excites her as much as it hurts her, and she feels like she can imagine...
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The mother fries bacon for the father’s breakfast while her son (the girl’s brother) eats cereal. The father packs his things up...
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