Sigmund Freud states that “a dream is the disguised realization of a repressed desire”. What he means to say is that every dream represents the fulfillment of a wish. Dreams represent the imaginary fulfillment of a desire or impulse in early childhood, before such desires are repressed. Dream images represent unconscious desires or thoughts masked through symbolization and other distorting mechanisms. Freud concluded that the dream is the conscious expression of an unconscious fantasy or desire that is not accessible to individual existence. Here is an example that may relate to Freud's theory of dreams and is in a story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The story is set in a Civil War era and begins with an unidentified man preparing to be hanged by a company of Union soldiers on a railroad bridge spanning a river. He is then identified as Peyton Farquhar, a man who attempted to destroy the same bridge they are on based on information given to him by a Federal scout posing as a Confederate soldier. Although he is aware that this could cost him his life and even the sacrifice of his family members, he was willing to do so, Peyton is hanged for attempting to burn the bridge. The narrator vividly gives us a picture of the dilemma Peyton is facing, which symbolically shows us how he escaped death and was reborn right before he died. The author evokes the reader's sympathy for Peyton by showing the final punishment she received. Ambrose Bierce uses time as a way to manipulate the reader's perspective. This distortion of the continuous forward motion of time disrupts the perception of reality. When the reader can no longer distinguish real from perceived reality, other character judgments are also called into question. The interruption of time allows the sequence of events in the story to be presented in a way that forces the reader to question any assumptions made about Peyton Farquhar's true character. Taking the reader through the mind of Peyton Farquhar during the moments before his death, his miraculous escape, and his sudden return to the present, the reader wonders about the true nature of time and the effect it has on consciousness. of reality. Let us now return once again to Freud's theory, repression is a process of continuous reworking of latent dream thoughts to deform them or make them unrecognizable. The darkness of dreams is due to the censorship between the unconscious and consciousness. This is why repression exists: "What is rejected by censorship is in a state of repression" (Freud), so dreams can be considered as obvious fulfillments of desires. In Freud's theory there are two ideas that develop in our brain, the first is in the unconscious and the second is that of free access to consciousness. In the middle between the first and the second there is control, that is, a power that clashes and contradicts itself. It acts as a guard that prevents certain repressed emotions or thoughts from rising to the surface. Ambrose Bierce continually foreshadows the upheaval of time and Peyton Farquhar's impending death. In the moments leading up to her hanging, Peyton's reality begins to become distorted. “He became aware of a new disorder.” (Bierce 63) “A sound he could neither ignore nor understand, a percussion as sharp, distinct, metallic as the strike of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil.” (Bierce 64). What should be irrelevant background noise suddenly becomes.