47 pages • 1 hour read
Ashley WinsteadIn My Dreams I Hold A Knife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Psychology of Memory and Shame
The theme of memory—or the lack of it in the face of shame—is hinted at from the first words of the novel, as it opens with: “Your body has a knowing. Like an antenna, attuned to tremors in the air, or a dowsing rod, tracing things so deeply buried you have no language for them yet” (1). Jessica may not remember her actions from the night Heather died, but these words imply that her body does. The following few hundred pages tease out this knowing as Jessica’s memory of Heather’s murder finally becomes clear, and she accepts the part she played.
The title—In My Dreams I Hold a Knife—hints at the dream-like quality of Jessica’s fragmented memories as she tries to reconcile the revenge fantasies she imagined with the truth she’s hidden from herself about what happened that night. “I wanted her to die. I remember thinking it. Picturing it” (248), she tells Coop, convinced she’s the murderer. As the novel progresses, and layers of memory are peeled back like an onion, Jessica is slowly able to face the shame she carries, which stems from her father’s substance abuse and the pressure he placed on her to fix their family through success and academic achievement. Her shame manifests in her constant need to be adored and perceived as better than everyone else.
Often, a glitch occurs when Jessica feels at her best—like in the first chapter as she envisions herself walking into the Duquette reunion—triumphant and beautiful. Instead of the perfect scene in her mind, she sees an image of “torn blond hair, sticky and red, matted against white sheets” (6). Throughout the novel, as Jessica grows in self-acceptance, she sees this image more and more, her memories crystallizing around it. In the end, once Jessica knows she didn’t kill Heather, her memory returns, and she can see what she didn’t do to help her dying friend. After acknowledging this shameful memory, she returns to the idea of bodily knowledge: “When had my body first tried to tell me the truth? Was it the moment in Blackwell when Mint confessed what he’d done, and I felt the heart quickening pang of sameness?” (315). This flicker of recognition of their weak fathers and similar jealousy and rage allows Jessica to stop protecting herself from her recollections and move beyond the shame, clarifying her memory so that she can move toward self-acceptance.
Ambition, Obsession, and Identity
Jessica Miller is obsessed with her ambitions. On the surface, these ambitions might seem shallow: she wants to be the prettiest, to have the whitest teeth, to have the most toned arms, to have the best job, make the most money. Put simply, she wants to have and be the best at everything. She thinks of herself “like a spreadsheet, all [her] assets tallied” (4). At first, there’s no clear reason why Jessica came to be this way, but the more she shares her history and relationship with her father, the more the flaws in her self-image and warped sense of identity make sense. Despite her perfect looks and job, her “shadow list” surfaces when she looks too long in the mirror: everything she “ever failed at, every second place, every rejection, mounting, mounting, mounting” (4) leads to the “unbearable suspicion” that she’s “utterly mediocre.”
From the time Jessica was young, she yearned to be seen. In fourth grade, she found out that a teacher she loved and felt seen by confused her with other Jessicas in the class. Later, she didn’t make a list of the prettiest girls in middle school. These moments crushed her fragile self-esteem, but in high school, she had a chance to rebuild it through—as her Harvard graduate dad urged her—working hard until she was “the best student in the whole damn school” (311). Her father, addicted to Oxycontin, got her mother pregnant and settled for a job as an accountant at a steel mill instead of making it as an economist in Washington, DC, as he dreamed. Because of this, he pressured Jessica to go to Harvard. In Jessica’s eyes, a degree from Harvard or—when she doesn’t get in—Duquette, the best school that accepts her, might actually make her father happy, and if he’s happy, he might not need drugs. But this becomes a moot point when Jessica is a senior in college, and her father is found dead of an overdose in a rented motel room.
Once her father dies, Jessica becomes even more obsessed with her ambitions, causing her to act in disturbing ways, such as choosing status, wealth, and prestige over friendship, kindness, and even Coop, the man she loves. She cannot face the idea that her “one wild and precious life” (199) might turn out like her father’s, “small” and fading with only three people “huddled” around a grave.
Some of the main conflicts in the novel stem from Jessica’s exorbitant ambitions, which are impossible to attain. Once everyone’s secrets and faults are laid bare, Jessica sees the cracks in everyone’s image, acknowledging that everyone is a “quilt of light and dark” (315). Once Jessica remembers leaving Heather to die, she sees the emptiness of such extreme ambition. She lets go of her job and the image of success she cultivated over the last decade and chooses a happy life with Coop instead.
The Dynamics of Class in Friendships
Unlike most of her friends in the East House Seven, Jessica’s family is not wealthy. Though she cannot afford Duquette, it’s the best school she gets into, and to make her father happy, she goes into debt for the tuition. Her family’s lack of money adds to her sense of imposter syndrome, as most of the other students she encounters are wealthy. It is also possible that in her search to always be “the best” and in the best crowds, she subconsciously surrounds herself with people who have more than her. Coop, a scholarship student with a single mother, is the only one in her friend group who also struggles with money.
To someone like Jessica, who measures herself against those around her, her comparative poverty is another way to feel inferior, deepening her obsessive ambitions. Heather, her wealthy friend, is not above making comments reminding Jessica where she is in the pecking order. When Courtney insults Jessica as a freshman, Heather stands up for her but says in front of everyone that Courtney is “punching down,” implying that Jessica is below her in prestige.
Later, when Jessica and Heather dress for a party, Heather has the idea to swap clothes, calling Jessica’s dress “charmingly down-market.” These comments are always said with a smile and seemingly no guile, but they reinforce the hierarchy between them. Heather will always be above Jessica because she has more money than her, which feeds Jessica’s jealousy and envy. On the day Jessica gets a $10,000 bill from her credit card company, Heather—who has just gotten a new BMW—tells her, "Not everything has to be about money” (76) because Heather always has more than she needs.
Jessica’s college boyfriend, Mint, another member of the East House Seven, is the son of a wealthy real estate developer. Though he never demeans her in the same breezy way Heather does, his wealth gives him status on campus. He is seen as Duquette “royalty.” When Jessica returns a decade later for the reunion, two other alumni tell her, “It was so inspiring to see the two of you together. It gave the rest of us hope, you know? That unlikely pairings can happen” (35). In response, Jessica’s stomach drops, realizing everyone sees her as undeserving of him. Later, when his point of view chapters appear, we see that he also believes this, choosing Jessica because she would always be grateful and doting. The situations Jessica finds herself in as she surrounds herself with wealthy friends end up causing some of her worst actions, which are rooted in her feelings of inadequacy.
