How is the note of pathos brought in towards the end of the story in ‘Dream Children’?

The chief features of the essay is the author’s mingling of pathos and humor. Lamb begins the essay in a somewhat deceptive manner, describing the incidents full of humor. But gradually towards the end, he expresses pathos by subscribing the various tragedies of his personal life.

Eventually, the theme of the essay surfaces as ‘regret’ and ‘loss’. Regret for unfulfilled joy, unfulfilled love, lost hope, lost opportunity and lost joys of life. There are three aspects describing the theme at work in this essay.

The first is the loss of past happiness as represented by the house with its carved mantle that a ‘foolish rich person pulled down.’ Both, great grandmother Ms. Field and Uncle John, died painful deaths, while Lamb watched on being then left alone without their presence, love and care. What he missed the most was their presence.

The other note of pathos can be felt in his narration of the loss of his beloved Alice (Ann Simmons). Lamb courted her for seven long years but in vain. The relationship failed to meet its desired end and Ann went on to marry another man named Mr. Bartrum. His pursuit for her love was a failure and it explains why the dream child is named Alice and why he becomes confused about which Alice, younger or elder, he is really looking at.

Lastly, there is pathos concerning the ‘Dream Children’; children who never were. The children who have been so close to him in his dream represent the ‘dream’ or aspirations that he would have had while trying to woo his beloved. On a surprise ending, which is dramatic and at first bewildering, we learn that the children whom he had been telling the stories to – stories of love and life joys, which he regrets losing, are nothing but air, are a mere figments of a dream in a bachelor’s sleep. These are the children that would have been, that could have been, that might have been, if Alice had granted Lamb her love and if they had eventually got married. As it is, the children are but phantoms of a dream. All he really has is his faithful sister Mary Lamb by his side.

Thus, one can identify the note of pathos towards the end of the story.

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