Feed

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“The Bridge of Dreams”

In this activity, students will create a chart to analyze dreams in the novel, then write and illustrate a fictionalized dream for one of the characters.

Dreams are a significant motif recurring throughout the novel. This motif manifests in ways that explore the concept of dreams and how they function. For instance, the academic lecturer Titus hears on the feed describes the era as an age of dreams, an epoch that was preceded by the age of writing, which was preceded by the age of oral culture. With the feed, consumer culture means simply dreaming something—or imagining it—can make it become real and deliverable to the dreamer’s doorstep. Dreams can also refer to the longing or hoping for something. Additionally, they refer to the activities of the sleeping mind, though the feed causes dreams to function differently than in a brain with no implant. With the feed, dreams are a mix of firing synapses and external influences and communications. At the end of the novel, Titus references an ancient Japanese saying: “(L)ife is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams.