Literary dream · Falling & stuck
Would the fall never come to an end?
Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?” she said aloud. “I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth.
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- Source
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll, 1865. Ch. I
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Oxford, England · British
- Date
- 1865 (novel)
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Alice’s adventures are revealed at the end to have been a dream.
- Imagery
- Falling · Darkness · Child
- Feelings
- Wonder · Confusion
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Sensations of falling or being unable to move are often reported near the edges of sleep. Ellis described them in terms of the body’s signals reaching the dreaming mind; sleep researchers today discuss related experiences such as hypnic jerks and sleep paralysis.
Ellis (1911), ch. V
Mythological
Falls mark thresholds in many myths — the fall from paradise, Phaethon tumbling from the sun chariot, descents into the underworld — moments when one order of things gives way to another.
Comparative mythology
Chinese traditions
Classical dream books such as the tradition attributed to the Duke of Zhou catalogued falling and climbing among common dream images; their readings were folk conventions rather than fixed meanings.
Folk dream-book traditions
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- The animals fell out of Noah’s ark Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- I could make the summer Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- The scene I had to write England · before 1911
- The acrobat who never touched the floor England · before 1911
- A child climbed out of a hollow tree Tang China · c. 840
- Six mirrors in the barber’s shop Tokyo, Japan · 1908