Desire and Dream in Literature: Two Essential Lenses for Writers and Teachers

When writers pick up a book, whether it’s a classic novel, a contemporary memoir, a speculative epic, or a slim poetry collection, we’re not just reading for pleasure. We’re reading to learn what works in master texts. So every page becomes a conversation with our own ambitions, anxieties, and imaginative possibilities.

At the heart of this conversation lie two powerful ideas that shape nearly all storytelling: desire and dream. They might sound abstract, but they’re spot-on lenses for studying literature. When we read with desire and dream in mind, we understand characters more deeply, and we can write with clearer intention. We notice why characters make choices, why stories move us, and why we return to the blank page again and again.

Desire: The Engine of Character and Conflict

Desire is the backbone of narrative. Without it, stories have no pulse. A character who wants nothing gives the reader nothing to hold onto. When we read, we instinctively gravitate toward longing:

• Emma Bovary’s hunger for romance and status

• Gatsby’s idealized vision of success

• Rizal’s longing for national freedom

• Harry Potter’s desire to belong

Desire animates the plot, fuels tension, and creates stakes. When reading with this lens, we share asking:

• What does the character want most?

• Why do they want it?

• What forces, internal or external, resist that desire?

As we take note of how authors shape longing, we begin to see narrative structure with X-ray clarity. We realize, for example, that Flaubert critiques bourgeois ambition; Woolf highlights women’s desire for intellectual freedom; and Achebe interrogates communal vs. individual aspirations.

Desire is universal, but never neutral. Class, gender, culture, and history influence what people are allowed to want or fear wanting.

For memoirists, diaspora writers, speculative authors, and realists, desire is both deeply personal and profoundly social. When we read with this in mind, we don’t just ask what our characters want. We ask why they want it, and who permitted them to desire it.

Dream: The Imagination of What Could Be

If desire points to what’s missing, dream points to what’s possible. Dreams in literature can be surreal or symbolic:

• Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”

• Kafka’s uncanny transformations

• Márquez’s magical realism

But dreams also operate on cultural and ideological levels:

• the American Dream

• postcolonial nationalism

• utopian/ dystopian futures

When reading with this lens, we should consider:

• What future does the character imagine?

• What dreams are celebrated or dismissed?

• How does the text propose or critique a vision of the world?

Dream exposes ideals and fears. It reveals the gap between lived reality and imagined possibility. In some modern classics, Langston Hughes asks: What happens to a dream deferred?
Fitzgerald asks: What is the cost of chasing a myth? Dreams aren’t just speculative. They shape memoir, poetry, and realism.

Dream is the horizon of desire, and literature lives in the tension between them. Every story has a dream, even nonfiction, because every narrative explores how humans imagine better or worse futures. Writing the dream shapes the theme, builds the worldview, and connects our characters to the context.

Quick Reading List for Writers and Teachers

As readers, we immediately notice an author’s style, voice, or technique. But reading for desire and dream connects craft to meaning. We take note of the emotional stakes of narrative, the social forces that shape motivation, the ideologies behind plot, and the symbolic or metaphorical worlds in the text.

Some Classics of Desire

• Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert

• Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare

• In Search of Lost Time — Marcel Proust

Dream as Hope or Ideology

• The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald

• “Harlem” — Langston Hughes

• One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez

Postcolonial and National Desire

• Noli Me Tangere — José Rizal

• Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe

• Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie

Surreal or Psychoanalytic Dreamscapes

• The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka

• “Kubla Khan” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• The Interpretation of Dreams — Sigmund Freud

Desire and Dream in Writing and Teaching Ground Storytelling

More than technique or comprehension, literature is built from human longing and imagination. Desire and dream often collide in whatever genre we are studying. Characters navigate cultural expectations, family history, and personal longing. Writing through dream and desire produces more resonance. As writers, we sharpen the character arcs if we’re intentional. As teachers, we deepen the class discussion around agency, culture, ethics, and imagination if we’re conscious of these lenses.

Reflection Prompts for Writers

· What desire drives my characters or narrator?

• Is that desire shaped by culture, family, history, or power?

• What dream frames the world of my story?

• Do I write toward validation, witness, healing, identity, or transformation?

Discussion Prompts For Teachers

• Ask students how they can identify character desire beyond surface goals

• What dreams, national, ideological, personal, shape the text’s worldview?

• How do desire and dream connect to student experiences or contexts?

• What questions encourage both critical and empathetic reading?

Next time we open a novel, a memoir, a poem, or go back to our own draft, let’s pause. Ask what desire drives the narrative, and what dream shapes its horizon. The answers might illuminate not only the story, but the writer or educator we are becoming.